A Machiavellian model for Obama

Washington Post ^ | November 4, 2011 | Dana Milbank

[gusopol3]

Chris Matthews, the voluble host of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” has written a compelling blueprint for President Obama’s reelection. But it doesn’t mention the current president.

Matthews’s new book, “Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero,” adds another volume to the already groaning shelf of Kennedy biographies, but this one, happily, isn’t just about Camelot or conspiracies. It’s also about the Machiavellian Kennedy, the political street fighter who with his brother encouraged opponents to believe they were “dangerous enemies” who preferred to be feared rather than loved. “Bobby was the one who’d gained the reputation for ruthlessness,” Matthews writes, “but Jack could be pitiless.”............

“They scared the [expletive] out of me.” They did more than that to Roger Blough, the U.S. Steel president, who defied Kennedy in 1961 by raising prices. “You have made a terrible mistake,” Kennedy told him. Subpoenas flew, FBI agents marched into steel executives’ offices, and Kennedy spoke about IRS agents examining “hotel bills and nightclub expenses [that] would be hard to get by the weekly wives’ bridge group out at the country club.”

[gusopol3]

More lefty longing for thug and dictatorial abuse of power. How'd that kind of lawlessness work out for the U.S., steel industry and even United Steel Workers union, Milbank, you slobbering idiot.

[Darkwolf377]

the political street fighter

I've only heard leftists use this term.

I am so sick of JFK, but even moreso, I'm sick of Chris Matthews and his phony populist bull****. He gets on the tube and is always just so disgusted about what those Republicans are doing to the working man, and blah blah blah.

And yet the only time he ever seems happy, when he's BEAMING, is when he's swooning over those working-class Kennedy boys.

I live in Massachusetts, and if you think you're sick of Kennedys where you live, imagine how I feel walking through Rose Kennedy Park, crossing JFK Surface Road, going past the Kennedy federal building...EVERY DAY.

[gusopol3]

I can imagine. I get tired just of Freeper admirers of JFK.

[McBuff]

Watch the video of Matthews talking to Sally Quinn about JFK's infidelities. As you watch it. . .think of the recent press treatment of Herman Cain.

Video Here

[gusopol3]

Thanks. I also found it galling that JFK intended as part of his thuggery to expose infidelities of his targets. He really took it as a given that the press corps was going to cover for him, and they still do, like John Edwards. I remember Jim Miklijewski from NBC news questioning Toon in Moscow in the immediate wake of Troopergate; Toon gets up , throws down the mike and mutters something about “the supposedly liberal press. “ It should be a Youtube classic, but it’s only a memory.