The Candidates
One thing that I’ve always been curious about is why pols are so quick to embrace the JFK moniker. Yes, Kennedy embodied hope and whatnot, but there’s the question of what he actually <i>did</i> in his almost three years in office. Looking over his Wikipedia entry, there is the Bay of Pigs invasion, keeping us from getting blown up by Russians in the Cuban Missile Crisis, escalating Vietnam, founding the Peace Corps, installing the Baath party in Iraq, overseeing the last federal death penalty for decades in 1963, and making some famous speeches in Ireland and Germany. His party lost 20 seats in the House on his election and then another four in his midterm election. He also, in my understanding, hemmed and hawed for years on the civil rights issue because of concerns about the politics, before finally proposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In other words, it seems like a pretty mixed bag of some very good things and some very bad things over the course of almost a full term.
Now I understand that he was apparently very inspirational. Not having lived through his Administration, I perhaps can’t fully appreciate Camelot. But it seems safe enough to say that the major, long lasting change reforms of the 1960s — the Kennedy Tax Cuts, Medicare, Medicaid, AFDC, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the FHA, etc. — came about only when his curmudgeonly, hyper-experienced Vice President, who knew how to work the Senate, came to office.
Just a thought (and no, it isn’t that Obama should be assassinated).
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Just in case anyone is interested, it appears that Ralph Nader will be announcing he’s running for POTUS this weekend on Meet The Press, i wish all the best to him, but it will be a tough fight to get on all state ballots, and to get to the 15% Nationally to participate in the debates. But i wish him all the luck b/c if its a close election, he could peel some votes away from Obama or Clinton that could help McCain.
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Sean. . . Good points about JFK. I’d add that he operated in a time when the press was still relatively hands off, so he didn’t have to worry that stories about his personal life would be splashed across the front page of the New York Times, nor did he have to face a questioning media day after day regarding much of his policy. Not until LBJ, and especially once Nixon came to power, did the press take on the investigative activity the Fourth Estate is known for today. Also, Kennedy’s “curmudgeonly” VP also worked the Senate during JFK’s administration, so there was less animosity between the two branches than we’ve come to expect nowadays. It was a completely different time back then (way before my time as well) but, all in all, I think I prefer the current era to that of Camelot.
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Yeah, I’m sick of the idiotic JFK references, too, as if JFK was some kind of saint.
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Honestly, he’s really only thought of as an amazing president because he was assassinated.
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I heard an NPR interview about Harold Washington … and while he hasn’t been made much of a hero, they were talking about how he was similar and different from MLK.
This lead to the question why people make heroes out of dead people. One old Chicagoan said “they make heroes our of them because dead people can’t lead nobody nowhere.”
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:05 pm
For many years, polls asking “Who is the greatest President” would invariably have JFK among the top five (very often #1). I also recall a poll of high school history teachers asking the same question. JFK was #1. Mind-boggling, but there it is.
This was in the 80s, so my guess is that those history teachers were baby boomers greatly influenced by Camelot and the assassinaion.
As we boomers fade from the scene, I think Kennedy will be assigned a realistic place in history, somewhere in the middle of the pack. Right next to Garfield, probably, with whom he shares some parallels (Garfield’s signature issue was civil service reform, which was enacted by his sleazy successor, Arthur).
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:09 pm
What JFK did that was huge:
1) His call DURING the campaign to Coretta while MLK was in jail was huge and very courageous.
2) His “old as the scriptures speech” denouncing racism was huge.
Both of the above had a huge impact on the nation, and esp the South connecting the immorality of racism/segregation with Christian beliefs.
He stood up to the USSR thus refuting Nikita’s belief that since JFK was democrat, he could be rolled.
This was huge.
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Off thread Jerry Doyle calls the Obama and Clinton campaigns THE GREAT AMERICAN MISERY TOUR just thought that was hilarious.
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:26 pm
That’s all for the good, and I gave him the Cuban Missile Crisis, though I’m not certain LBJ would have handled it any worse (since for all his faults, he was staunchly anti-communist).
And I don’t doubt he was courageous and gave many good speeches that stirred the soul. But those things fade quickly, and matter little if they aren’t followed by concrete results. And I gotta say, it was LBJ working over Howard Smith to get a much-beefed-up version of the bill Kennedy proposed through the House and Senate (and it was LBJ who goaded Kennedy into introducing his watered-down version in the first place).
I’m not saying inspiration and hope isn’t important. I’m just saying that experience is awfully underrated if you really want to bring about lasting change.
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:42 pm
JFK would have been far superior to LBJ because JFK, unlike LBJ, was not burdened by white guilt.
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:43 pm
The ability to bring about lasting change for the good is mainly determined by the substance of the change and the ability to persuade.
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:54 pm
I think the standard for Presidents can be better elicited by asking the following, easy questions:
Did you a) defeat the mightiest nation (at the time) in the world? and b) found what would go onto to become the country with the highest GDP, best army, and most innovation in the history of the world?
If you answered ‘no’ to either a) or b), you are not the “greatest President.”
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Two more JKF accomplishments:
(1)He proved that a tax cut could lead to increased revenue. This gave Reagan the precedent to use twenty years later, and Bush 43 twenty years after that.
(2)He set the goal of a man on the moon by 1970. All that money into space exploration was a huge boon for science and research.
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Tony,
Historians disagree how to rank Washington and Lincoln. Some rank them Washington, Lincoln; and others rank them Lincoln, Washington. Be that as it may, there is little argument that the two greatest presidents, bar none, are Washington and Lincoln. One created the union against great odds, the other preserved it against great odds.
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:04 pm
#14 AMEN on that. And to my mind, FDR is #3 obviously.
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:15 pm
14. marK
Ho-hum. As has been discussed to an extent on another thread, I am not a big fan of Lincoln, because
a) his policy positions led to southern secession
b) he effectively started a war leading to 600,000 dead
The idea that he preserved the union against great odds is, I suppose, true on some level. In terms of population and military resources, however, the conflict was asymmetrical. The odds surely were with the north - it was the south that persevered (for as long as it did) against great odds.
Having said that, in an important sense he did not even preserve the union as it had existed before the Civil War, as it was no longer a voluntary association of states.
If sheer brutality and carnage are the indicators of “greatness”, then Lincoln definitely deserves a place head and shoulders above the other Presidents, perhaps followed by Johnson.
February 23rd, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I’ve always found convincing Theodore H. White’s comment on Washington. He was asked if the reason he rated Washington as the greatest president was simply because Washington was the first president. He answered, “No, it’s because there was a second president.”
I’d rate Lincoln second and Jefferson third; though I admit my reasons for Jefferson involve his non-presidential accomplishments, especially the Bill of Rights.
February 23rd, 2008 at 3:37 pm
17. BobH, “No, it’s because there was a second president.â€
Heh, exactly.