British historian Paul Johnson described Kennedy as “more showman than statesman”.
In a private meeting after the debacle, Eisenhower excoriated him for believing that an operation of such scale could be “plausibly denied” as anything but an overt American government action.
Yes, the idiot didn't want the world to look at America as the aggressor, but the stupid jackass didn't grasp that was how the world was going to see it no matter what happened and if he wasn't going to go full bore, he shouldn't have done it at all.
And of course we repeat that bit of stupidity in Vietnam.
There is something about an "Ivy league" education that tends to make people stupid.