Talk:John F. Kennedy

"crisis" should read "Cuban Missile Crisis", please.

Not Fair

It is not entirely fair to lay the blame of the failure of the Bay of Pigs squarely at JFK's feet. There was a lot of urging from the CIA and the military NOT to go ahead with American military itervention on behalf of the insurgents. Considering the atmosphere of the world at that time, I can't say listening to them was a horrible idea. Regrettable that the operation was botched, but the reasons why it was botched are not 100% of JFK's doing.

And it's quite interesting that the hawks in his administration that urged him NOT to intervene in Bay of Pigs are the ones who the author of this article quite cleverly insinuates are the reason why Kennedy kept us safe through the Cuban Missle Crisis, as if without them Kennedy would have been inept. If you're looking for the slightest reasons to praise the hawks in his administration, even if it is to just lessen JFK's abilities as an individual, you could have made mention of the hawks being the driving force behind not intervening in Bay of Pigs, and thus applauded them for it in the process (when keeping in mind that not risking such a blatant and overt challenge to the USSR that would not have been necesary and risked TERRIBLE reprecussions...). But it looks like the author of this article was too concerned with finding anything to blame on Kennedy, and thus missed their opportunity to render more praise unto the conservative hawks. Jros83 02:30, 25 June 2007 (EDT)

To add to the Bay of Pigs discussion, the CIA under Eisenhower actually made the plan, it was recomended to Kennedy once he took office. The way this page reads is as though he is 100% totally at fault for everything. I think he was a do-nothing president that is only popular because he was assasinated, but seriously folks, lets calm down the rhetoric. ALSO: I changed the reference about him being the "youngest president". He was the youngest person ever ELECTED president, but Teddy Roosevelt was actually a year or two younger than Kennedy when he took office. I didn't want to re-write the whole section, but I figured I'd throw in a minor correction. JamesBenjamin 18:54, 29 June 2007 (EDT)

Sordid personal life

Okay, I've tried twice to include something about how Kennedy was a sex fiend and twice they were scrubbed right away. I expect this lionizing nonsense from Wikipedia but I thought the point of this was that conservatives could actually post relevant information about entries of importance without having it waxed by Marxist Wikipedia editors. If I'm missing something, then please tell me why Billdozer

Show us solid, verifyable evidence from official sources that Kennedy was such a man, and we'll include it. Karajou 22:38, 11 March 2008 (EDT)

What's a solid, official source? There isn't an official source that says Bill Clinton was, um, serviced by an intern in the Oval Office, but everyone in the world knows it to be true. Similarly, there were no shortage of witnesses who could attest to JFK's ravenous sexual apptetite. Billdozer

Witnesses came out within weeks testifying as to Bill and Monica's indiscretions; plus there's past indiscretions all over Arkansas, such as Paula Jone's and others lawsuits. These, at the least, made the newspapers at that time. I want to see similar patterns for Kennedy, reported in the newspapers at the time he was a U.S. senator, as well as when he was a U.S. president. Karajou 05:47, 12 March 2008 (EDT)

There are other reliable sources than newspapers. The newspapers wouldn't even have printed Clinton's misdoings if the Drudge Report hadn't forced the case into the open. The press was well aware of what JFK was really like but they protected him, as the press tends to do for left-wing presidents. But good luck finding a JFK biography, even a glowing one, that doesn't at least acknowledge some sort of pattern of sexual misconduct. Billdozer

new material added

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Part of this article was copied from Conservapedia but the copied text was originally written by me, RJJensen (under the name Richard Jensen) and does not include alterations made by others on that site.

RJJensen 19:03, 22 November 2008 (EST)

JFK a conservative? What?

I take issue with the two sentences, "JFK, like his family, was middle-of-the-road on domestic issues and conservative on foreign policy" and "The Kennedy family represented the conservative wing of the Democratic party"

Since when did the Kennedys represent the conservative wing of the Democratic party? All of them are liberal stalwarts. As for his foreign policy, it was his idea to pull out of Vietnam, among other things. As far as domestic policy, he was definitely liberal; his civil rights plank, championing of a Medicare-type program, Peace Corps, etc.

I motion that the first sentence be revised to "JFK, like his family, was liberal on domestic issues and middle-of-the-road on foreign policy" and that the second sentence be dropped entirely. ChuckR 19:28, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

Joe Kennedy was always one of the main leaders and financiers of the conservative wing of the Dem party, and was a main supporter of Joe MvcCarthy; Bobby was an aide and supporter of Joe McCarthy. They were all strongly anti-communist and very critical of labor unions (which were much more powerful in those days). The Peace Corps was the main "liberal" achievement, though conservatives have not opposed it. It was JFK who sent forces INTO Cuba and Vietnam to fight Communism. His civil rights plank in 1960 was just about the same as the GOP plank. He did not champion Medicare. The surviving Kennedys turned left after JFK was killed and the father had a stroke. RJJensen 17:18, 2 November 2009 (EST)

I know that the Kennedys were staunch anti-communists, but I've never heard JFK--or the Kennedy family--described as conservative. Any citations you could make? Also, as for Cuba and Vietnam, one, Cuba changed his opinion on foreign policy. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy's foreign policy went from being center-right to being center-left, and his calls for peace and negotiations replaced hawkish rhetoric. Secondly, Kennedy actually wanted to pull out of Vietnam, and had started the motions to do so before he was assassinated. Johnson reversed it, and escalated it. ChuckR 21:55, 2 November 2009 (EST)

sending combat forces into both Cuba and Vietnam to stop Communism is pretty dramatic example of a conservative foreign policy, not to mention forcing the Russians out of Cuba. In domestic policy he took many conservative positions: he opposed unions (esp Teamsters), opposed deficit spending, and supported tax cuts. He never supported abortion in any form, or gay rights. And (in 1960) he moved the country to acceptance of Roman Catholicism. Finally, he was opposed by the major liberals of the day (E. Roosevelt, Humphrey, Stevenson); for his VP he picked Johnson, considered a conservative at the time. The Kennedy family was known for leading the support of Joe McCarthy in 1950s. As for what people say, try Googling "jfk" and "conservative" and look at the 2 million hits.RJJensen 22:54, 2 November 2009 (EST)

Well, first of all, if you Google "FDR" and "Conservative" you get 9,510,000 hits. I guess this makes Old Man Roosevelt the greatest conservative of all time then, eh?

Anyway, let's take a walk through history, shall we? Here's a list of some of Kennedy's liberal traits.

First of all, JFK supported the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. Not only is this confirmed by Robert McNamara in his film "The Fog of War," but an audio recording of then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson referring to this plan of Kennedy's is also shown. Also, consult Kennedy's National Security Action Memorandum 263, from October 1963, which called for the removal of 1,000 armed forces personnel to be removed by the end of the year.

Yes, Kennedy was--for a long time--a foreign policy hawk. No question. But by the last year of his life (post-Bay of Pigs), he was moving in a more dovish direction. He negotiated the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and gave a famous speech about world peace at American University on June 10, 1963. http://www1.media.american.edu/speeches/Kennedy.htm

Secondly, John F. Kennedy's tax cut was a demand-side tax cut, not a supply-side cut; Ronald Reagan he was not. You could argue whether a present-day liberal would institute such a measure (probably not), but no conservative would either. http://www.slate.com/id/2093947/ A good article about this.

Your talk of Kennedy not supporting civil rights seems to neglect the entire last two years of his life. Kennedy deployed federal marshalls in 1962 to allow James Meredith to enroll in his first class at the University of Mississippi. Furthermore, after George Wallace infamously blocked the doorway of University of Alabama, John F. Kennedy gave one of his most famous speeches, his civil rights speech, on June 11, 1963. In it, he proposed what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. You can find a transcript here: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/003POF03CivilRights06111963.htm It is startling to me that you don't know of this. Also note that John, along with brother Robert, helped secure Martin Luther King's release from prison http://www.lib.lsu.edu/hum/mlk/srs216.html

Your claim in the main article that Kennedy never claimed to be a liberal is false. One of his most famous quotes is this, from September 1960, in accepting the New York Liberal Party nomination: "If by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."" Also note the mention of civil rights.

By saying that Kennedy never supported abortion or gay rights, you're creating a false strawman. Abortion and gay rights were not issues in the 1960s; by this measure, you could just as easily claim that Nixon and Goldwater were liberals because they didn't (between 1961 and 1963) speak out against those two issues. Fact of the matter is, abortion didn't become a major political issue until Roe v. Wade. Had Kennedy lived, and opposed abortion through the 1970s, you may have had a point. The Democrats didn't introduce a gay rights plank to their party platform until 1976; the Republicans didn't introduce one in opposition until 1992.

But while we're talking about modern issues, here's President Kennedy arguing for universal health care in May of 1962 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14A1zxaHpD8

Kennedy signed Omnibus Housing Bill 1961, which proposed spending $3.19 billion on a massive government housing program for the working poor. It also called for the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Urban Affairs.

Kennedy opposed the quota system for immigration, saying it had "no basis in either logic or reason." He said to Congress on July 23, 1963: "It neither satisfies a national need nor accomplishes an international purpose. In an age of interdependence among nations, such a system is an anachronism for it discriminates among applicants for admission into the United States on the basis of the accident of birth." (Kennedy, John F., Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1964, pp. 594-597.)

Kennedy signed HR5143, which abolished the death penalty for first-degree murder in Washington DC.

As for Kennedy and FDR, read "Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech That Changed America." Franklin Roosevelt was one of Kennedy's heroes. His "Ask not..." quote and "New Frontier" were efforts to mimick FDR's "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" and "New Deal," respectively

It's also funny that you claim that the Kennedy family represented the conservative wing of the Democratic party; Joseph Kennedy Sr. strongly opposed the Lend-Lease Act and indeed, any aid to Great Britain at all. In 1940, he famously proclaimed "Democracy is finished in England. It may be here." He supported Chamberlain's policy of appeasement; read "The Dark Side of Camelot" by Seymour Hersh for more. So yes, the elder Kennedy did oppose FDR, but from his LEFT, not his right.

John F. Kennedy Kennedy established the President’s Commission on the Status of Women to examine issues of women's equality. Who chaired this group? Eleanor Roosevelt, whom you claim he opposed.

It's ashame that you felt the need to lock the page, enshrining your uncited and biased new article as "fact," and stifling what should be a robust debate and exchange of ideas. It also upsets me that you think I should "read more and think more," when clearly you aren't aware of (or simply chose not to mention) a great deal of what Kennedy believed or what policy directives his administration took. You do bring up good points about areas of his conservatism; he was a hawk for a while, he was tough on crime, etc. I don't mean to demean those points at all; you make them eloquently. But as I've clearly shown, he was quite liberal in many areas as well. My guess is, if he were alive today, he would probably be a Democrat in the mold of Joe Lieberman, or perhaps Evan Bayh. Hopefully, we can resolve this, and re-write the passage together to find a better balance, and more accurately show that Kennedy worked in both conservative and liberal directions in his long and illustrious career. ChuckR 13:30, 5 November 2009 (EST)