Posted on 07/17/2011 5:32:01 PM PDT by izzatzo
As I studied the Vietnam war over the last 14 months, I began to think that John F. Kennedy probably was the worst American president of the previous century.
(Excerpt) Read more at ricks.foreignpolicy.com ...
Not as long as Carter and Wilson are still on the list.
>> “No. Actually, JFK might’ve been the best Democrat President since the 19th century.” <<
.
He was that, easily.
There was not one “worst” president. There where seven, all tied for last place. Johnson (Lincolns VP) Buchanan, Wilson, F.D.Roosevelt, L.B.Johnson, Carter and Obama. Obama led the pack in speed getting on the list. Clinton would have made the list but for the Republican controlled congress.
“In 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988. This order permitted federal workers to engage in collective bargaining and opened the door for states and cities to do the same. In my opinion, it is the biggest single act that has led America to our current financial nightmare. Why? I agree with the Roosevelts.
President Teddy Roosevelt vehemently opposed such a decision and extended policies prohibiting federal union workers from even talking to Congress. In 1902, he issued Executive Order 163 prohibiting union workers from,”individually or through associations, [soliciting] an increase of pay, or to influence or to attempt to influence in their own interest any legislation whatever, either before Congress or its Committees, or in any way save through the heads of the Departments in or under which they serve, on penalty of dismissal from the government service.” He twice issued Executive Orders expanding the restrictions on collective bargaining for federal workers.
Even President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said allowing government employees to organize and strike against the taxpayers was “unthinkable and intolerable.” In 1955, George Meany (what a great name for a union leader), President of the AFL-CIO said, “It is impossible to collectively bargain with the government.” When you permit weak, self-interested, voter-loving politicians and self-interested, dues-loving labor leaders in the same room with taxpayers’ money, only bad things will happen.”
Unquestionably.
At the very least, Truman qualified as a "good man". Name the Democrat presidents and nominees since who earned that stature.
Carter, LBJ and Woodrow Wilson were worse.
Ted Kennedy did run for President in 1980.
Well, I thought about putting (probably) on Truman. Arguments can be made for Truman, though.
The fact that Kennedy didn’t have those “accomplishments” is what makes him much better. The Great Society programs were bad. They were LBJ, not Kennedy.
And United States Notes.
It has been argued that the Catholics have stayed with the Ds because of JFK. On Pro-Life, the Catholics should be with us. On other moral issues, they agree with us. But JFK has kept many with the Ds.
were they silver backed? They are United States Notes, not Federal Reserve Notes.
The Federal Reserve might not have liked that.
Whoever made that argument is an idiot.
It is argued that Republicans won the Catholic vote in Eisenhower’s reelection in 1956, (the polls are conflicted), but that would have been the only time before Kennedy that the Catholics voted Republican.
Since Kennedy, the Republicans have won the Catholic vote at least 3 times, and possibly a 4th and a fifth, (the polls argue those).
Here’s the argument again.
When the Dems decided to be 100% Pro Abortion, they should’ve lost a lot more votes than they did.
Loyalty to JFK has kept a lot of Catholics on board. Yes, the fact the Dems have gotten completely immoral, has caused losses. But JFK has kept some on board. It would be worse for Dems if not for JFK.
Actually, Coolidge was also a fiscal conservative. It was Herbert Hoover who was Commerce Secretary who wanted to tinker with spending programs to rescue the economy. Harding rejected those ideas and instead cut taxes.
Looking back, if I was a voter in 1948, I probably would have voted for Truman. Dewey was a great DA, a pretty good governor, but a lousy candidate for President. He practically gave away the election to Truman.
political rule 1 ; never speak ill of the dead
i didn’t bother reading your forward.
But there are always exceptions.....
In the case of the stain, the label "worst and most harmful individual ever to hold the office" could be and has been firmly affixed since February 1, 2009.
Do you mean little disagreement by establishment academics? Actually he sounds like a genius to me. See below.
In the aftermath of that ghastly horror called the Great War, Warren Gamaliel Harding ran for president and won. His platform: Return to normalcy. He was the dark-horse candidate, but won 60% of the vote. Among his first actions was to pardon Eugene Debs, the socialist candidate, who had been jailed for opposing the war draft. He reduced taxes, deregulated, and generally calmed down the country after a culture-wrecking, budget-busting war, and assured a time of great prosperity.
Harding resisted intervening at all in the recession of 1921, and it thereby went away rather quickly, as all recessions will tend to do. He signed the peace treaties which formally ended WWI, and sought world naval disarmament at the Washington Naval Conference of 1921—22. The Teapot Dome Affair that wrecked his administration was a big nothing compared to the crimes of presidents past and future.
Of course historians hate him. They say he was a do-nothing president. Harding himself admitted it. He said that he was unqualified to be president. Indeed, no man is qualified to be president. Harding was honest enough to say it outright.
After the Cold War, we needed these kinds of policies. But normalcy is too boring to the organized right and left, who want to keep the population in a wild frenzy of fear in order to impose a massive state that will do their ideological bidding. These people all agree that peace and prosperity are the worst things that can happen to a country, because these conditions supposedly make us weak and unprincipled. In fact, normalcy is the precondition for civilization itself.
So let Harding speak to us now again.
There isn’t anything the matter with world civilization, except that humanity is viewing it through a vision impaired in a cataclysmal war. Poise has been disturbed, and nerves have been racked, and fever has rendered men irrational; sometimes there have been draughts upon the dangerous cup of barbarity, and men have wandered far from safe paths, but the human procession still marches in the right direction.
America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.
It is one thing to battle successfully against world domination by military autocracy, because the infinite God never intended such a program, but it is quite another thing to revise human nature and suspend the fundamental laws of life and all of life’s acquirements...
This republic has its ample tasks. If we put an end to false economics which lure humanity to utter chaos, ours will be the commanding example of world leadership today. If we can prove a representative popular government under which a citizenship seeks what it may do for the government rather than what the government may do for individuals, we shall do more to make democracy safe for the world than all armed conflict ever recorded.
The world needs to be reminded that all human ills are not curable by legislation, and that quantity of statutory enactment and excess of government offer no substitute for quality of citizenship.
The problems of maintaining civilization are not to be solved by a transfer of responsibility from citizenship to government, and no eminent page in history was ever drafted by the standards of mediocrity. More, no government is worthy of the name which is directed by influence on the one hand, or moved by intimidation on the other...
My best judgment of America’s needs is to steady down, to get squarely on our feet, to make sure of the right path. Let’s get out of the fevered delirium of war, with the hallucination that all the money in the world is to be made in the madness of war and the wildness of its aftermath. Let us stop to consider that tranquility at home is more precious than peace abroad, and that both our good fortune and our eminence are dependent on the normal forward stride of all the American people.
“I have always thought of J.F.kennedy as an empty suit, a facade with no real substance.”
As have I, an empty suit at best; but, nevertheless, less dangerous at his time than the empty suit we currently have at this time. The reason I thought it was an interesting article was that it challenged the “Camelot” Kennedy myth; and, it might show that, lo, after all these years of being bombarded by the Camelot myth, maybe the myth is losing a little lustre, it’s about time. But, I’m surprised to see by a number of responses on this forum that there are still a number of JFK myth beleivers, even here.
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