Obama aside, I don't think you can judge JFK's presidency one way or another - he was only half way through one term.

What Packer omits is the optimism that infected a part of the nation during JFK's term. All problems solvable.
The best and the brightest.
Peace Corps. We will change the world.

We are going to the moon!

We choose to do these things, not because they are easy, because they are difficult.

"The energy we bring to our endeavors will light our country.
The glow from that fire can truly light the world."

I remember.

that's all for the goo I guess. The world needs heroes, and there's little wrong with fake ones.

Yeah -- it is all for the "goo". The world does not need fake heros. While I disagree with his politics (and certainly the politics of Collier and Horowitz), P.J. O'Rourke's review "Mordred Had a Point" of Collier and Horowitz's book on the Kennedys (which title I forget) is right on target: the JFK worship and the associated idea that a President is kind of an elected king rather than someone we the people hire to steer the ship of state are horrible things.

Without JFK's "thesbian talents chang[ing] the nature of electioneering" we would not have had either Reagan or Bush. People wouldn't have cared about whether the President had the common touch ("who would you rather have a beer with"). They would have been more likely to vote for the person who could do the job of President.

While, as a big gummint liberal, I disagree with O'Rourke on what is entailed in that job, I agree that we should look for someone who can do the job rather than someone who will be our fearless leader.

*

Also, maybe it's because I'm Jewish, but nu? how is having a "legalistic position" on civil rights necessarily at odds with finding them to be a moral issue? We didn't in fact need a preacher in chief in civil rights -- we needed someone who would actually do things that ensured people had legal rights. JFK might have been slow and cautious about doing so -- but the problem wasn't that he was slow in adopting a moral approach and stuck to legalism: he could have been "legalistic" about it and ... well, laid down the law, so to speak.

DAS is giving JFK too much credit for changing the nature of political campaigns. FDR and Ike both won elections largely because of their perceived personal qualities. The new, explicit emphasis on "charisma" in the wake of JFK was largely the result of the advent of television and would have happened soon even if there had never been a JFK.

He wasn't anything like a lock for reelection.

That's not very accurate, from my understanding. I agree that JFK is generally overrated by people who worship him as a heroic figure, but he had approval ratings in the 60s or 70s, didn't he? Would he really have been in any serious danger of losing to Rockefeller or Goldwater?

The Cuban Missile Crisis was not really JKF's finest hour. He came out the other end looking good, but when the full, behind the scenes story came out, it made JFK look really, really bad. He refused to even consider agreeing to remove US missiles from Turkey in exchange for the Soviets moving theirs out of Cuba, even though he recognized that it would be a fair deal, and even though the US was already planning to move them anyway. (Kennedy didn't even remember that they had placed missiles in Turkey a year earlier, even after being reminded by one of his advisors; the guy was pretty clearly not all there.)

Basically, Kennedy risked nuclear war for the sake of a PR coup at Khrushchev's expense. He got lucky: Khrushchev wasn't quite as reckless as he was. But Kennedy himself feared that if the truth got out, people would be outraged.

I understand the longstanding backlash against JFK worship, but I think it leads us to downgrade his actual accomplishments and overstate Johnson's achievements. Kennedy won labor law reform (extending the minimum wage and workplace protections to workers excluded form New Deal legislation), mental health funding, expanded public housing, and increased spending on job training for unemployed workers. The tax cut that Packer refers to was, like the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, and immigration reform, only passed after his death. Its also worth noting that Kennedy cut a deal with the AFL-CIO to exchange wage restraint for an economic stimulus and tighter regulation of monopoly pricing (leading to his fight with the steel industry). If you look at the productivity vs. real wage numbers for the early 1960's compared to the 1950's, its clear that this was effective, as real wage growth trailed productivity growth under Kennedy (allowing unemployment to fall without stimulating inflation) as compared to Eisenhower (when real wage growth exceeded productivity growth, leading to three recessions from 1953-1961).

Anyway, its not the most impressive record around, but its pretty good. And Packer should acknowledge that the official policy of the US at the time of JFK's death was to withdraw advisers from Vietnam, Diem's assassination notwithstanding. Maybe the coup indicated JFK was going to change the policy he'd just adopted, but there is no direct evidence of that.

More broadly, Kennedy was extremely popular - with approval ratings in the 70s for almost his entire term. LBJ was much more successful in moving legislation, but one ought to consider that 1) given that the bills he moved had been introduced by JFK and resisted by Congress (the civil rights bill was moving out of committee in the House at the time of the assassination) he was clearly helped by the fact of JFK's tragic death: it made it much easier to cajole fence sitters and threaten the recalcitrant. And 2) in 1965-1966 Johnson had a much larger and more progressive majority that Kennedy had, which was not a consequence of LBJ being a brilliant politician. Had JFK faced Goldwater in 1964, he too would have mopped the floor with him (70% approval ratings will do that for you).

What I really want to know, is how much of LBJ's civil-rights legislation got passed over--forgive me--over John Kennedy's dead body?

How much did that make it political difficult to vote against it?

I was born in 1981, so I I have no clue how it was at the time and that's not really the kind of thing that is recorded in a lot of places.

I wonder how much of the halo is also due to Bobby's presidency run in 1968, in which he ran on a stronger pro-black civil rights platform (even getting some support from the Black Panthers after he attacked the murder of some of their members) and also ran against the war. This latter point probably absolved JFK of his responsbility for the war among some people because his brother probably was the most likely guy to get us out quickly out of everybody running in 1968.

Those of us who had early-boomer parents -- especially if they went to Catholic school growing up -- have had to deal with the insufferable Kennedy nostalgia from them our entire lives.

I'm being a bit snarky, but PJ O'Rourke via DAS has a point-- the sort of hero-worship of the presidency that is only considered acceptable in extreme circumstances (eg, Lincoln and FDR) became the "expected outcome" of the presidency because of JFK. I used to feel jealous that the boomers had a president they genuinely admired. Now I've gotten over the notion that I should ever have that mindset in the first place.

Can't we just deny Kennedy's flaws and deify him like the Republicans did to Reagan?

To a Politician Dying Young

THE time you won your party the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all politicians come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Country man of a stiller town.

Smart man, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of men that wore their honours out,
Politicians whom renown outran
And the wars that soured before died man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The speech on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended office up.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its rule
The garland briefer than a girl's.

Three things that pissed of California voters that you guys will not understand:

Passing the torch idiocy: The torch did not belong to Ted to pass, it belongs to the people.

The Hampton girls (Oprah , Caroline and Maria) do not speak for women. The Oprah stunt was a joke in California, we don't want brilliant, we want competence.

Meanwhile back in California, the Latinos got their own leadership, they have a memory of who supported them and they were not waiting for the old white guy to tell them how to vote. Thanks Ted, but no thanks.

Women don't want to be inspired, they have the responsibility for families and the future., they want leadership and solid governmental policies.

And yes, why is it not as world shaking to have a woman president as it is to have a man?

Health care matters, we don't want mandates take off the table, this is the democratic party not the libertarians.

"That's all for the good, I guess, the world needs heroes. "

Wtf?

If that's true, why isn't Tonkin ok? Don't wars need their comforting origin myths?

Who wrote that piece of drivel?
No, what the world needs is some matter of fact truth-testing competence and committment. The Dems have had NO SPINE for 7 years. They're an embarrassment.

Even the experienced brass-knuckled brawler of the machine, Hillary, is she tough? Tough enough to cave and become ever more centrist. Attaboy, Hillary. Keep caving. Take no political risks. She's been harder on Obama than Bush.

I wish we had a candidate of real open-eyed strength. Enough empty rhetoric of Obama, no more false Camelots.

Also Kennedy, being the first president that openly believed in Keynesianism, could be seen as the cause of the stagflation of the 1970’s.

Now Warren G Harding and Bill Clinton, who governed similarly, deserve another look on the other side. The country did very well under these men. I hope Hillary governs like Bill governed.

what the world needs is some matter of fact truth-testing competence and committment.

I believe that was Walter Mondale's electoral strategy.

Look, people need their heroes. You might not like it, but it's true. It's the same way that people prefer to be managed by someone who's tall and have thick hair. There are plenty of exceptions, but there just aren't enough Jack Welches to go around.

The trick is to stop deluding yourself into believing that the competent but mumbling technocrat ever has a chance and evaluate your options from there. It saves a lot of wasted time.

I hope Hillary governs like Bill governed.
Bill governed for his first two years; then Newt and the rest came in and his governing took a back seat to fighting for his political life for the next six years.

"The trick is to stop deluding yourself into believing that the competent but mumbling technocrat ever has a chance and evaluate your options from there."

That's why I didn't write that.

I also wrote we needed competence and strength and a backbone. You must've just stopped reading after that sentence. Mondale?

people need their heroes. You might not like it, but it's true.

I guess ... assuming it's part of human nature. But:

- that doesn't mean we shouldn't push back against this inherent desire for heroes. If it's a pernicious phenomenon, and I think it is, there's no reason to passively accept it. Humans also seem to have an innate desire to act violently towards one another, but that doesn't mean we throw our hands up and accept perpetual war.

- even if people need their heroes, they don't need to come from the political realm. Let Michael Jordan be a hero. I'd rather the president be someone we regard as a servant, not a superior. We should tolerate him, not worship him. He works for us. The very idea of a "leader" is kind of fucked up.

Someone on this blog once accused me of insisting that "politics is the art of joyless rectitude." This was supposed to be an insult, but frankly, it sounds about right to me. Fervent religiosity has no place in politics. But then again, I was raised Catholic, so I think that fervent religiosity has no place in religion either.

stellaa does not speak for CA. While it's true that no one cared about Oprah, et al, I should probably add that no one cared about Bill Clinton either. Or for that matter, the Governator.

Kennedy wasn't just a mediocre president; he was an irresponsbile president.

Not only did he get us into Vietnam, he was a cold warrior and a hawk. I remember the Cuban missle crisis. If Krushchev hadn't been a sane, mature adult, it could have turned into a nuclear disaster.

Kennedy was incredibly immature. While Bill Clinton had affairs and tried to hide them, Kennedy flaunted his affairs--and shared women with Mafia mobsters. This, as RFK understood, was both dangerous and irresponsible.

JFK saw himself as a playboy, hanging out with Peter Lawford and Dean Martin.

And he was not responsible for the Peace Corps--credit for that goes to Shriver.

JFK was much more like the young Ted Kennedy--driving drunk--much less like RFK.

RFK cared seriously, and passionately about justice and civil rights. JFK enjoyed being a celebrity.
He liked having a girl jump out of his birthday cake.

Did he make the country "feel good" and lift the mood? Yes. But so did Ronald Reagan. But that didn't make him a good president, just good at being a celebrity.

Thanks to television JFK was our first actor/ president.

He barely squeaked by Richard Nixon, and even then, probably only through buying votes in West Virginia and Illinois.

And while I'm in the business of shooting down zombie historical memes, Nixon did everything in his power to dig up some reason to contest enough states to overturn the result. The myth of Nixon conceding gracefully rather than put the country through the trauma of a recount (resurrected during the 2000 fiasco, and used to bash Gore) is an invention of Nixon himself, in Six Crises.

(The larger point is valid, but I can't stand it when people get this wrong.)

The myth of Nixon conceding gracefully rather than put the country through the trauma of a recount (resurrected during the 2000 fiasco, and used to bash Gore) is an invention of Nixon himself

I've always been amazed at how credulously people accept this myth. I mean, we're talking about RICHARD FUCKING NIXON here! I can't believe anyone finds it remotely plausible that Nixon was willing to forgo the presidency "for the good of the country," in light of his behavior a decade or so later. Self-sacrifice for the greater good was not exactly his defining characteristic.

Oh, he has the chance to be a better president.

If you ignore statistical reality, you could say that I have the chance to be a better president.

When Obummer cuts the crap and gets down to whatever it was he was talking about while spraying out all that churchy
faux-charisma.... actually includes some kind of real content regarding what and how he plans to make 'change'... and hopefully includes something that will not howl in the breeze like so much political oatmeal... then he can kick Hillary's butt anytime.

Meanwhile, all the pundits, professional 'help pay my rent by clicking this box' blogphonies and crap artists will pluck the strings for this buffoon, who has all the deep thoughts of a high school debate team captain.

What is really great about having arrived in 2008 is we can ignore a bombastic, empty candidate even though he's black. Or female.

Further underscoring Tom Hilton's point, the Election Night results had Kennedy winning California and Hawaii, giving him a huge Electoral College margin and making any challenge on Illinois, etc., seem futile. Only after the deadline for contesting Illinois had passed, recounts in California and Hawaii switched those states to Nixon and thereby made challenging the Illinois results seem plausible in retrospect.

Also, West Virginia wasn't one of the states where the Republicans were claiming fraud. (Texas was, but Kennedy had a comfortable 2% margin there.) I think Ezra is conflating allegations about the general election with the West Virginia primary, after which Kennedy joked that his father had sent a telegram saying "don't buy another vote--I won't pay for a landslide". If you search for this, by the way, you'll find a lot of sources that take the quote seriously, attributing it directly to Joe and using it as evidence of vote-buying. History on the Intertubes is an endless game of Telephone.

Curiously, it held my comment for approval again. Should I just be pasting URLs without making them links?