[Candor7]

I agree that what Kennedy did positively in his presidency was a result of acting conservatively in the areas you mentioned. But he also entered quid pro quo on security, refusing to fully inform the American public that he got the Russians to stand down in the Cuban missile Crisis by agreeing to remove US ballistic missles from deployment in Turkey. Few Americans know that today. He didn't just simply move the Russians away from their line by force of moral superiority, as many liberals still believe he did today.

The Bay of Pigs still haunts Cuban Immigrants today.He was disloyal and peripatetic in his committment to retaking Cuba, which he could have done if he had committed to it. If he had done so, communism would not have spread so widely throughout the Carribean and South America. We are still paying for that today. One of my friends ins an indipendent contractor with the CIA, held by FARC in Colombia since 2002. None of that would have happened if Kennedy had truly moved on Cuba, and there are very personal consequences for me in that failure.

So I do not believe one can see Kennedy was all that great , despite the messianic emotion his alleged martyrdom generates in many Americans.

He was thoroughly solid on economic and monetary policy, and was a fiscal conservative thanks to training from businessmen relatives in his family.I agree with you on that.

[editor-surveyor]

In the last 45 years, three presidents have taken action to pull our fat out of the fire: Kennedy, Reagan, and Bush43; while six have failed to do so when they could have: Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush41, and Clinton.