Posted on 11/25/2017 10:56:38 AM PST by SeekAndFind
We remember the 54th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination this week.
There is something about President Kennedy's legacy, as Alan Brinkley wrote a few years ago:
President Kennedy spent less than three years in the White House. His first year was a disaster, as he himself acknowledged. The Bay of Pigs invasion of Communist Cuba was only the first in a series of failed efforts to undo Fidel Castro’s regime. His 1961 summit meeting in Vienna with the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was a humiliating experience. Most of his legislative proposals died on Capitol Hill.
Yet he was also responsible for some extraordinary accomplishments. The most important, and most famous, was his adept management of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, widely considered the most perilous moment since World War II. Most of his military advisers – and they were not alone – believed the United States should bomb the missile pads that the Soviet Union was stationing in Cuba. Kennedy, aware of the danger of escalating the crisis, instead ordered a blockade of Soviet ships. In the end, a peaceful agreement was reached. Afterward, both Kennedy and Khrushchev began to soften the relationship between Washington and Moscow.
He is extremely popular overseas, but the reasons are vague. No one can give you a specific reason or accomplishment.
They love him in Latin America, perhaps for the Peace Corps.
His impact in U.S. politics is huge, and I would recommend Dr. Sabato's book, The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy. Every modern Democrat embraces Kennedy.
For the record, Cuban-Americans are not among JFK fans, primarily because of the Bay of Pigs.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
To wit:
People put up his picture in their homes in the same way they'd put up a religious figure's or a movie star's, maybe subconsciously feeling that he was a bit of each.
Plus he came around at the right time.
The country was more united in the Eisenhower years than it has been for a very long time and Kennedy benefited from that.
Now add a bit of snob appeal and some naughty boy transgressive edge to that mainstream popularity and you've got a cult figure -- and cult figures were something the 60s did well.
Thanks SeekAndFind. He gave inspiring speeches, which means he had good speechwriters (Pierre Salinger? Salinger is thought to have ghostwritten "Profiles in Courage" if memory serves, for which JFK got a Pulitzer I think); he was glib in his press conferences; he managed to get the country motivated to build the Apollo missions to the Moon, although the F1 engines were already having their components tested during the Eisenhower administration, and most of the reasons for the success of Apollo are the German rocketeers led by Von Braun. The late Jake Javits said, "he was a lousy president", but that's probably too harsh. He was not one of our better ones, that's certain. Neither was his successor LBJ.
He did a deal with the Russians. They took missles out of Cuba we took miss Les out of Turkey. He is no hero .
He also had a mistress who was an East German spy Ellen Romesh.
“Same with Obama. “
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But the....the subject here was/is POTUSES, right?/!
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Actually, according to what I recently read but cant cite the source (seems like I read a recent book about Eisenhower that I cant recall the title of), Eisenhower was asked by his inner circle (which was staffed by heavyweights) if it wasnt dangerous to create the CIA group which invaded at the Bay of Pigs. On the basis that it might be used to launch a poorly prepared, ungrounded attack on Cuba. Ike replied, Not while I am president, and his adviser said that that caveat was what he was worried about.Eisenhower briefed JFK about the program and warned that it should only be used when there was a plausible alternative to Castro. JFK was a lot less attentive to Eisenhower before taking office than he had every reason to wish afterward that he had. The invasion had no leader with the stature to claim legitimacy as the president of Cuba.
When JFK explained to Ike that he had withheld air support to keep US fingerprints off the operation, Eisenhower was dismissive of the conceit that, in any such operation, US involvement could plausibly be denied.
For me, Trump ended the elitist era, perhaps temporarily that was ushered in when Kennedy was assassinated.
All said, JFK ran and became POTUS, CINC, etc. He neither ran nor became God nor a defendant!
Nuff said.
My OPINION: ~ Well done!
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And Naval cover. The Cuban Freedom Fighters were promised that our ships would soften up their landing zones and keep the Castro forces suppressed.
Kennedy didn't have the decency to call the whole thing off, and then he didn't have the decency to inform the Cubans that he was withholding the air and naval support that they thought they were going to get.
It was this bungled invasion that caused the Cuban Missile crises. Had it never happened, the Soviets wouldn't have put missiles in Cuba to defend against another such attempted invasion.
[ Among others, he shared a mistress with the Mafia. ]
Well, and Adolph Hitler.
FReepers are the smartest on the freedom web. But y’all missed the best answer you should be teaching to your young ones.
JFK performed the best act of any modern U.S. President.
JFK halted fake money. He created a competing currency to the Fed Reserve fake money. Over time, Fed money loses.
The greatest impact of any nation is their fake money.
Will let this overlook slide, but next time. :-)
Most of what we are told of the Cuban Crisis is propaganda. JFK started it by putting missiles in Turkey. The Cuban missiles were retaliation. The USSR “backed down” when JFK pulled the missiles out of Turkey.
His tax cuts were great. He was awful otherwise.
Their glamour made them celebrities. Watch a press conference with Kennedy and listen to his spontaneous wit. No president in my lifetime did that. I’m 70. My mother thought he could do no wrong, even Bay of Pigs.
Presidents wer protected then. If his mistresses hit the news he would have been disgraced and toast, especially Exeter who was already with Giancana. I rate him an average president. I think if he had tow terms he may have been great or mediocre hard to tell, all supposition.
I think the Kennedys contributed directly either physically or psychologically with Monroe’s death. Peter Lawford being their intermediary.
I like the way they went after Hoffa and some of the mafia. But after having their support in the election that may have killed him.
I would add Catholics adored him. Many homes I went into had the pope and JFK’s photos displayed. When he died I was at a debate tournament in Glendora. We were all sent back to our own schools. I went to catholic boys school in La Verne CAL. We sat with TV monitors waiting for rides home. The young Irish priests were all distraught.
ROTF LMAO: Wow, nothing like a little embellishment.
By the time Nixon got us out of Vietnam, Kennedy's legacy was toast. I'm not convinced at all he would have done what Johnson did there, so I'm also not convinced Kennedy's legacy went much beyond the mid Johnson term in office.
Half-Century,... just silly nonsense...
America got into the space race under Eisenhower and by the time Kennedy became president, we were doing quite well.
the standard response by pro-jfk folks appears to be that the CIA lied to jfk on intelligence that jfk relied on to support the invasion... (?)
It also just so happened that the 1962 elections were coming up, and the GOP looked to make some major gains. Kennedy could have perpetrated the crisis in the summer of 1962, when evidence of Soviet missiles in Cuba first emerged and Senator Kenneth Keating (R-NY) was making speech after speech on this issue. But the president chose to raise the issue in mid-October, and the crisis was resolved nine days before the election.
Many Democrat candidates benefited from the euphoria felt by many Americans who were relieved that thermonuclear war had apparently been averted while the Republicans complained that the election was "Cubanized."
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