[AmericanVictory]

He started a trend of erratic personal decision-making in matters of strategic importance that ultimately led to the debacle of Bill Clinton. He made very bad decisions that led to the Berlin Wall, for example, which need never have been built. The hagiography over the "Cuban Missile Crisis", for another example, makes one want to puke. Consider something the hagiographers never mention. In exchange for the Soviets supposedly pulling their missiles out of Cuba, we pulled ours out of Turkey, which had given us control over the Soviets. That control was very effective. So by letting Castro go free and unchallenged Kennedy then had to give up our best control of Soviet behavior. Kennedy created a trend which was to culminate in Clinton, of creating problems and then posing heroically to "solve" the problems he had created.

[DeFault User]

He made very bad decisions that led to the Berlin Wall, for example, which need never have been built.

Well said. The Soviets perceived Kennedy as weak and attempted to exploit that weakness at every turn. The USSR would never have dared to put missiles in Cuba if Nixon or Eisenhower were in the Oval Office. Conversely, the Soviets perception of Reagan was the opposite--they knew he would not back down.