FP Magazine: "Was John F. Kennedy the worst U.S. president of the 20th century"

[jimmy olsen]

From some guy's blog at Foreign Policy. Certainly a bit over the top, though I'd consider him below average. Gets points for not blowing the world up, but he's the one who brought us to the brink in the first place by coming off as a pushover in front of Khrushchev. Then there's the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the assassination of Diem, escalation in Vietnam, and his apathy on Civil Rights. Bobby was the Kennedy that really pushed for that.

http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/07/15/was_john_f_kennedy_the_flat_out_absolute_worst_us_president_of_the_20th_century

Was John F. Kennedy the flat-out absolute worst U.S. president of the 20th century?

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Friday, July 15, 2011 - 11:13 AM Share

As I studied the Vietnam war over the last 14 months, I began to think that John F. Kennedy probably was the worst American president of the previous century.

In retrospect, he spent his 35 months in the White House stumbling from crisis to fiasco. He came into office and okayed the Bay of Pigs invasion. Then he went to a Vienna summit conference and got his clock cleaned by Khrushchev. That led to, among other things, the Cuban missile crisis and a whiff of nuclear apocalypse.

Looming over it all is the American descent into Vietnam. The assassination of Vietnam's President Diem on Kennedy's watch may have been one of the two biggest mistakes of the war there. (The other was the decision to wage a war of attrition on the unexamined assumption that Hanoi would buckle under the pain.) I don't buy the theory promulgated by Robert McNamara and others that Kennedy would have kept U.S. troops out. Sure, Kennedy wanted out of Vietnam -- just like Lyndon Johnson wanted out a few years later: We'll scale down our presence after victory is secure. And much more than Johnson, Kennedy was influenced by General Maxwell Taylor, who I suspect had been looking for a "small war" mission for the Army for several years. Indochina looked like a peachy place for that -- warmer than Korea, and farther from Russia.

(As a side note, there's another coup that JFK supported earlier in 1963: the Baathist one in Iraq that chucked out a pro-Soviet general. Events in subsequent decades obviously are not Kennedy's fault, but it still is interesting to look at the documents. Here's a State Department sitrep from, of all dates, Nov. 21, 1963: "Initial appraisal cabinet named November 20 is that it contains some moderate Baathis. Of twenty-one ministers, seven are holdovers from previous cabinet, thirteen are civilians, four are from moderate Shabib-Jawad faction of Baath (Defense -- Tikriti; Communications -- Abd al-Latif; Education -- Jawari; Health -- Mustafa) and a number of technician-type civil servants." Did you notice the name of that defense minister? I think this might have been Saddam Hussein's uncle.)

Anyway, I think his track record kind of makes even old Herbert Hoover look good.

[dps]

Apparantly, Mr. Ricks has forgotten that Wilson and Harding were also Presidents in the 20th century. 

[Martinus]

Why the fuck are you starting new threads for blog posts? Go fuck yourself you cripple.

[CountDeMoney]

Why the fuck are you starting new threads for blog posts? Go fuck yourself you cripple.

Man, you woke up on the wrong side of the cock this morning.  Had to sleep in the wet spot?


Timmay, you're a retard.

[Gups]

Why the fuck are you starting new threads for blog posts? Go fuck yourself you cripple.

Why the fuck are you posting when you are on holiday, you sad twat. Don't the rest of us deserve a break?

[jimmy olsen]

Why the fuck are you starting new threads for blog posts? Go fuck yourself you cripple.

The controversial title appealed to me and thought it would stimulate discussion.

[Grey Fox]

Guys, you need to stop crying about every new thread.


Kennedy gets alot of pity nostalgia because he was killed in office. Would he had served 2 mandates he probably would rank just after Harding.

[CountDeMoney]

Worst president of the 20th century?  Meh, not quite. 
Hoover, Nixon, Carter and Poppy Bush had mediocre/bad presidencies, and Dubya's presidency was so fucking bad, it actually went back in time and stunk up the 20th century.

[Gups]

Guys, you need to stop crying about every new thread.


Kennedy gets alot of pity nostalgia because he was killed in office. Would he had served 2 mandates he probably would rank just after Harding.

I dunno. I read "The making of a President 1960" recently by some journo. A contemporary account written just after the election. He was plainly besotted by JFK and seemed to think that a lot of the other hacks were too.

[Viking]

Kennedy - the guy men want to be and women want to be with... meh... I just think it is unfair JFK seems to be getting all the credit for LBJ's legislative successes in civil rights, welfare state and many other things. The pinko-liberal-bleeding-heart liberals of the 1960's spent all their political effort destroying the man who did more for civil rights and social justice than any other man in US history. The revolution always devours it's own children.

Had Kennedy lived he would have been as hated as LBJ, but less productive. Kennedy's most important contribution to society was selecting LBJ as his vice president and dying in office.

[Valmy]

The pinko-liberal-bleeding-heart liberals of the 1960's spent all their political effort destroying the man who did more for civil rights and social justice than any other man in US history.

I am a big admirer of LBJ but he sorta brought it on himself.  The guy, for all his domestic wizardry, was a bit of a bull in a china shop internationally.  Texans have a hard enough time dealing with Mexicans and Oklahomans, much less Frenchmen and Chinese.

[jimmy olsen]

Worst president of the 20th century?  Meh, not quite. 
Hoover, Nixon, Carter and Poppy Bush had mediocre/bad presidencies,

Bush 41 is extremely underrated.

[Valmy]

Bush 41 is extremely underrated.

CdM hates him.  This conversation will not go well for you.

[grumbler]

Bush 41 is extremely underrated.

Extremely over-rated by some, extremely under-rated by others.  He was an extremely mediocre president, and those are the easiest kind to get extreme about in over-rating as well as under-rating.

I remember when he was director of the CIA and approved a new plan to have Soviet capabilities analyzed by two teams, one looking to make the Soviets as capable as the intelligence supported, the other looking to make the Soviets as incapable as the intelligence supported, so as to bracket the problem.  When the reports were delivered, Bush declared them both correct! 

In some ways, Bush is like Obama; smart, but unwilling to take a stand.  He was a hell of a lot more knowledgeable than Obama, though.  He probably had the best training to be president of any president; maybe even any presidential candidate.

[Razgovory]

I'm not sure if any President could have resisted Vietnam.  I read an old Time magazine from 1950.  There was an article about communist insurgencies (and specifically the Huk rebellion in the Philippines.  The article mentions off hand that the Truman administration was already making moves toward shoring up the French in Indochina.  Vietnam was a disaster decades in the making.

I agree that Kennedy should have canceled the Bay of Pigs.  Kennedy was correct that nobody would have bought the idea that it was some sort of native insurgency if the US flew air missions over Cuba.  What he should have realized was that nobody was going to buy that it was some sort of native insurgency period.  It was a stupid idea, that probably wouldn't have worked even with US air support.  The CIA had grown complacent after the easy victory against Arbenz.  It underestimated Castro's popularity and his willingness to fight.  I doubt anything less then a military invasion by US soldiers would have dislodged him (probably followed by a lengthy insurgency).

I don't think the Vienna summit had much bearing on what Khrushchev would do.  The guy was erratic and a loose cannon.  It is impossible to predict what he would do in any given circumstance.

No, mention of the Berlin Crisis which Kennedy did fairly well at.

The year or so of many President's terms are often shaky as they are learning the ropes.  If we judged them all by that short time period  many would look pretty crappy.