RE: “John Kennedy was a partisan divider who slammed the Republicans every chance he got in 1960. But he inherited much of the good feeling of the Eisenhower era and ended up being more popular than he probably deserved. Getting shot helped.”
***********
Agree — post-war Eisenhower era was full of good feelings and new prosperity and Kennedy inherited that, plus people thought JFK was young and had a good looking family et al. By today’s standards, Kennedy was not very far “left” at all.
And yes, the assassination so early in the presidency, before the honeymoon phase had time to be over, helped his legacy more than anything.
——”By today’s standards, Kennedy was not very far “left” at all.”
Yes indeed. I urge all of you to ask your Libbie friends how they think JFK would have responded to 9/11 and they would have to answer “very much the way GWB did!”
JFK was one of the last strong-on-defense” Democrats and is the “gold standard” for Liberals.
Yet they skewered Bush for essentially having a JFK style approach to the war on terror. They would hate to admit this, but it’s true.