I’d be disappointed if Reagan really thought that. Kennedy had plenty of faults but sympathy for Communism was never one of them. Our confrontation with the Soviets over Berlin in 1961, with the Soviets over the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, his ramping up our role in Vietnam, his wiretaps of MLK over Hunter Pitts ODell and Jack Levison all argue against it.
JFK was scum, and Reagan was correct to call the man dangerous.
The Russians ran all over the guy, you describe his failures and displays of incompetence and weakness, as his virtues.
The Russians built the Berlin wall, defeated our retaking of Cuba, MLK won and Vietnam was a disaster for America.
In a personal letter to vice president Nixon in 1960, Reagan described JFK this way.
“I do not include Kennedy’s acceptance speech because beneath the generalities I heard a frightening call to arms. Unfortunately he is a powerful speaker with an appeal to the emotions. He leaves little doubt that his idea of the “challenging new world” is one in which the Federal Govt. will grow bigger & do more and of course spend more. I know there must be some short sighted people in the Republican Party who will advise that the Republicans should try to “out liberal” him. In my opinion this would be fatal.”
“One last thought,— shouldn’t some one tag Mr. Kennedy’s bold new imaginative program with it’s proper age? Under the tousled boyish hair cut it is still old Karl Marx—first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a Govt. being Big Brother to us all. Hitler called his “State Socialism” and way before him it was “benevolent monarchy.”