The JFK Administration ... a good case study ...
Well, it covers many things. Let's start with domestic.
First off, JFK was repeatedly cruxified for his religious alignment. At many times he spoke of his relationship with God, combined with the fact that he was Catholic, and he would have been utterly demonized in today's press. In the '60s, it was more tolerated during the "communist scare," not even a decade after "In God We Trust" was put on our currency and "Under God" in our Pledge. But some questioned him, regularly -- and I don't mean just the "are you going to take orders from the Pope?" stuff.
He was also very "plain spoken." While that was appreciated at times in our past, today, our mainstream media would have cruxified him -- although smaller media outlets did so even back in his day. I've long argued that if you are "plain spoken" but from the mid-west or north-east, you are accepted. But if you are "plain spoken" from the south, like Gore from Tennesee or Bush from Texas, you are jumped on. And he wasn't a saint either (and I'm not talking any extra-marital stuff). I'm talking about his partying and what-not (which I can't believe people ignore about Clinton but focus on Bush for?).
More on the macroeconomics front, Einseinhower ended his term warning about the military-industrial complex, something JFK fed. It started with JFK's combination of military build-up and tax cuts -- very popular all-around. I don't think people realize that both Reagan and W. followed JFK's lead, almost exactly, when it came to American fiscal policy. And it got JFK in as much trouble as it did both Reagan and W. when it came to "pork" -- although JFK wasn't around to see it, and LBJ made it even worse with the "Great Society" that he eventually abandoned.
Which brings us to military. Some of the greatest sets of thermonuclear tests were done under JFK. He put countless medium range ballistic missiles on the doorsteps of the Soviet, including Turkey. He adopted the "first strike" policy in Europe, which scared the Soviets shitless. And the countless spying and other military changes came under JFK.
He then turned around and invaded Cuba, despite the spin, it still happened, and he was still apart of it -- a soverign nation. And that created a major issue. Many have stated that many areas of the world are now at issue due to W.'s "aggressiveness," but was JFK any different? I mean, Cuba, and countless other nations, now felt repeatedly threatened. And no wonder there was a "shake up" in the Soviet leadership to a more "hard-lined" stance.
And that brought us to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Threatened by possibly invasion from the US again, Cuba reached out to the Soviets. The Soviets wanted missiles to counter the new threat in Turkey, and tell the US, "yes, we can 'first strike you in 5 minutes too!'" And when this happened, did the American people rise up against JFK and say, "You did this to us! How could you let this happen?" No. They didn't micromanage the President's decisions like he didn't know what he was doing -- but did JFK
really think things through? In hindsight,
no, I don't think he did until later! (including Bobby and his "Turkey bargain" during the Cuban Missile Crisis).
When the UN became utterly useless once again, JFK went outside the UN and signed an "act of war" in a blocade. At one point, as disclosed in 2002, the US used a tactical nuke against a Soviet submarine. The US made several other aggressive moves during the entire "situation." And in the end, the US expensed the defense of Turkey for its own safety, because that was the only way to get the Soviet to back down.
And even then, the US
never, ever proved MRBM were in Cuba. The US was chastized, constantly, for its "act of war" in the blockade as well as negative attitudes towards the USSR, in the UN. A
majority of nations blamed the UN for the Cuban Missile Crisis, and given the things that led up to it, they may have been correct! And the agreement with the US didn't get rid of the tactical nukes the USSR gave Cuba -- but only when Castro threatened to use them against the US independent of the Soviet leadership were they removed (thank God!).
And that's just the first 2.5 years. Now I'm not trying to "demonize" JFK here. I think he thought everything he did was right. He honestly tried. And because he was shot, he really avoided a lot of the blame.
Because let's talk about the JFK Administration beyond his death.
JFK brought in McNamara and countless other people. He put the first troops in Vietnam. McNamara was a penny pincher and poorly equiped our troops. He butt his nose into the military's affairs -- from unifying the equipment designations to the "powder" for the M16 to the "single plane for all services" F-111 disaster and the "useless for Vietnam" F-4, he was a total bafoon -- far worse than Rumsfield. People say he "stood down the chiefs" in the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is debateable (I think the JFK administration holds more blame than they get for military actions -- especially strategic build-up) but he also was a walking clusterfuck when it came to before and during Vietnam.
He single-handedly was the man who sold LBJ on putting the troops in -- and it became "McNamara's War." He was a "wiz kid" who thought he was above everything and everyone -- like countless others in the JFK administration brought in. They went in under-equipped. We were not prepared and the military had to adapt in the field. Beyond just the M16. No means to detect SAMs. No defense of firebases. Countless field inventions were by military field units, not anything the Secretary of Defense did.
Most of the "Great Society" and "Guns'n Butter" were fall-outs of JFK's military-industrial complex change in macroeconomics. Our economy was tanking as a result well before Vietnam escalated. LBJ takes the blame for putting all those troops in, but would have JFK acted different? The man who promised to defend anyone from Communism? I honestly think LBJ was more reserved than JFK. But everyone called LBJ "the liar" just like GWB today.
In fact, Bobby Kennedy was a two-faced SOB and I don't blame LBJ one bit for hating his guts by '68.
The difference between GWB and JFK are 2 things ...
1. There is no counter-superpower (at least not yet), and the US is called a "HyperPower." Everything JFK did,
everything was as an over-abusing superpower -- from the missiles in Turkey to the "first strike" policy to the invasion of Cuba and the "lingering threat" left over -- let alone the relentless thermo-nuclear tests, spying and countless other "aggressive actions" we did.
2. JFK was shot 2.5 years into his term. The question for me that will always linger is what would he have done in LBJ's place? How far would we have gone in Vietnam? The military-industrial complex? The countless other things? McNamara would have sold JFK on the war all-the-same, and JFK had a higher sense of anti-communist, pro-righteous, pro-God attitude than curse-mouthed LBJ any day!
And the counter-argument would have been, "what if GWB died 2.5 years into his term?" It really makes you wonder, eh? As much as people demonize him outside the US, he was fairly well liked until late 2003, after many things. One could argue many things about JFK in the same light -- especially after "facts" about what really happened in the Cuban Missile Crisis came out.
So, again -- and this is just the "tip of the iceberg" -- I see a
lot of similarities! In fact, he was
far more aggressive than GWB! One could argue that JFK
caused the change in the stance of the Politburo and the leadership of Nikita Kruschev!
But this was before CNN, Fox and countless in the media others stopped putting the pro-American spin on everything. This was during the Cold War when countries "picked the lesser of two evils." As I've said before, the US has not changed one bit, but the world has. We no longer do as we please like we did during the Cold War.
In fact, W. and even Clinton and H. Bush before him, do an awful lot of explaining -- far more than even JFK did. And JFK really made some "aggressive" moves that wouldn't be tolerated today. Let alone his administration's legacy lived on afterwards -- and LBJ regularly complained about leaving too many Kennedies in the White House.
:georges:
