Was John F. Kennedy the flat-out absolute worst U.S. president of the 20th century?

Foreign Policy ^ | 07/15/2011 | Thomas Ricks

[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.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I don't think so. Not only wasn't he a Jesuit, he wasn't even a priest.

[CITATION NEEDED]

[donozark]

Article itself mentions Bay of Pigs. I was merely adding to the list of JFK failures. Of which there are many. So many...He should have stuck to what Kennedys do best; Chase whores and get drunk. Or vice versa...

99% of Democrats have no idea he authorized the use of herbicides in SE Asia. Wanna start a fight sometime? Mention this to a gathering of Democrats. They will scream and shout and deny, deny, deny...

[delacoert]

Harding apologists - everyone's got to have a hobby.

They say he was a do-nothing president. Harding himself admitted it. He said that he was unqualified to be president.

[all the best]

Do nothing is exactly what we need. Not somebody who thinks he can run the country. That is not the President’s job. His job is to run the executive branch of the federal government. Nobody is qualified nor should anybody run the country.
We are in this mess because we have too many people trying to run our lives and economies. Compare the depression of 1920 to that 10 years later.

[Iron Munro]

Clarification:

Robert Kennedy left office AS ATTORNEY GENERAL in September of 1964.

He and LBJ didn’t get along very well and LBJ wanted to pursue his own agenda.

[dfwgator]

He and LBJ didn’t get along very well and LBJ wanted to pursue his own agenda.

Well as some suggest LBJ, was behind the coup that got rid of Kennedy.

[nkycincinnatikid]

Truman defined in one word.
Yalta.
And btw, Eisenhower who did a magnificent job in the European theatre considering who he was taking orders from,
argued against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Truman, the Senator from Organized Crime.

[W. W. SMITH]

The majority of a presidents time should be spent slapping down petty bureaucrats for encroaching on “We the People”.

[W. W. SMITH]

The majority of a presidents time should be spent slapping down petty bureaucrats for encroaching on “We the People”.

[W. W. SMITH]

Double post, I think that was a first for me.

I apologize.

[rollo tomasi]

I apologize, meant to write Hoover. Thank you for the correction.

[ansel12]

Dooley wasn’t a Priest.

[Iron Munro]

Well as some suggest LBJ, was behind the coup that got rid of Kennedy.

If you haven't read "The Warren Commission Report" on the JFK Assassination you have missed out on one of the most convoluted and clumsy government attempts at cover ups ever put into print. What is clear is that Democrats ran the assassination inquiry, democrats led the cover up, and democrats, from LBJ on down, profited from JFK's death.

And yet, almost 50 years after the fact, much of the government information and documentation on the assasination is still being withheld or very heavily redacted on release under the Freedom Of Information Act.

A reasonable assumption is that there has to be a reason for anything less than a complete release of all relevant information.

The only thing for certain is that there is a cover up.
We will never know the complete truth -

[editor-surveyor]

You are correct that extending collective barganing to public employees is bogus, but the fact still remains that the US was still stuck in the ravages of the “Great Depression” when JFK took office, and was headed to economic shutdown, until his tax cut allowed industrial expansion to begin. Prior to that we were living in the remains of a war economy that was falling on its face.

[ansel12]

You are saying that the 1945 to early 1960s economy was in shambles before JFK saved us?

[irishjuggler]

Truman didn’t attend Yalta. That was FDR. If Ike and others opposed use of the bomb, they were wrong. If you have a weapon that can end the war, you use it... period. You don’t sacrifice hundreds of thousands of American lives on an invasion of the Japanese mainland.

[Paperdoll]

I don’t doubt that LBJ had something to do with the assasination. I couldn’t stand that man!

[dfwgator]

If Ike and others opposed use of the bomb, they were wrong. If you have a weapon that can end the war, you use it... period. You don’t sacrifice hundreds of thousands of American lives on an invasion of the Japanese mainland.

Not only that, it saved the Soviets (who already took Sakhalin), from entering the fray, which certainly would have resulted in a divided post-war Japan, just like Germany and Korea, and a good chance of a Korea-like Civil War, which no doubt, the US would have been involved in.

[Wooly]

But Wilson with his University background and zero real world experience made the rules which all liberals live by. such as that the common person is not smart enough or just uninformed to know what is good for them. As such only the smartest people should make the rules for everyone and the smartest people are found teaching at universities.
Move forward to Obama and we have a professor for President who loaded his cabinet with other professors. Pure Wilson doctrine.

[Zionist Conspirator]

John F. Kennedy was indeed on the Right by today's standards. But by the standards of his own day he was on the Left. It's just that back then the Left wasn't into abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, and other crazy things. Plus back then even liberals were anti-Communist.

The problem is the culture keeps sliding Left. Today simply believing homosexuality is weird and wrong--something everyone on both sides of the spectrum once believed--makes one a "dangerous extremist."

What bothers me the most is that the few old time liberals who are still around from those times seem to have endorsed every leftward shift. Makes me wonder if FDR would have become "transgendered" if he'd managed to live a few decades longer.