Why is JFK still so beloved by the Left?

[DevotedDemocrat]

Some days I like to stop and think how much better the world would have been if RFK had become President.  Sigh.  He was everything his brother was, but better in every way.

You mean a ruthless little b*stard who very nearly became Joe McCarthy's assistant, was thought of as ruthless in his time, and ordered wiretapping of Martin Luther King?

[anvi]

Thanks, Nathan.  Hmm, another good joke down the drain.

Anyway, Kennedy had a compelling persona (like him or not) and very good speech writers, and of course the manner of his death has led to lots of additional romanticization. 

[Marokai Backbeat]

JFK was basically the Dreamcast of Presidents.

[tpfkaw]

1. Assassinated, therefore very rose-tinted glasses.
2. He presided over a period of relative peace and prosperity.
3. He was POTUS for a short enough time that any modern ideology can be projected on to him.
4. As typical, gross mishandling of major foreign policy crisis = "great"
5. Subsequent status of Kennedy family as leaders of Democratic Party left.
6. Still popular among Catholics.
7. See 3 and 4, doves can claim that he was totally going to withdraw from Vietnam even though he escalated it and assassinated Diem and LBJ also recognized that it was an idiotic idea and did it anyway.  Hawks can claim he was "tough" on USSR in Cuban Missile Crisis, Berlin speech, started US policy of favoring Israel in Middle East.

[bballrox4717]

I'm going to tackle this, because I've always been a huge JFK fan and he has been the pinnacle of modern American liberalism to me.

The answer is, of course, his rhetoric. While it is true that LBJ was responsible for carrying out most of JFK's ideas, JFK brought the American public to his side. He was able to capitalize on all of the good feelings of his generation, as well as the upcoming Baby Boomers. I don't think there is another president in American history that outright convinced the electorate that massive public spending on science and technology was a good idea. His economic policies made sense for the time and resulted in incredibly fast economic growth. JFK, like Obama in this sense, capitalized on the correct moment for finally tackling the Civil Rights movement, which was the third rail of politics for a long time. FDR had the most political capital of any president and he even refused to touch it despite all of his liberalism.

JFK also proved himself in the foreign arena after a rocky start; at the time of his death, he and Khrushchev had established a solid relationship and several scholars suggest that detente would have happened several years earlier than it did. As others have said on here, JFK had no intention in escalating the war in Vietnam as LBJ winded up doing and had planned to be out of there in 1965. I'll admit there's no knowing if that would have happened. I guess there's no sense in trying to determine what would have happened if he lived, but the information out there suggests that the 60's would have been way less rocky than they were under LBJ.

Most importantly, JFK was the perfect president for the time. He symbolized the American spirit and was really the first that got Americans to think they were the best. He was a proud liberal, and while he never got the chance to pass the legislation LBJ did, he definitely put the tools together to make it possible. Was he perfect? Absolutely not. His imperfections are well known, but no president is guiltless in their decisions. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. FDR interned Japanese Americans. I could rip on decisions of Washington, TR, Wilson, and the other top presidents as well. but anyone who claims that JFK wasn't a genuine liberal or doesn't deserve his place in history is kidding themselves.

My main point for JFK is that while LBJ does deserve due credit for actually accomplishing the domestic agenda, none of it was possible if it weren't for JFK's rhetoric. JFK was responsible for the support of all of the programs, and I thoroughly believe that JFK would have thrashed Goldwater in 1964 with just as big of a margin as LBJ did, if not more.

[© tweed]

'Camelot fantasies'

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Now, if you consider who was the Dominican President whom they got overthrown, that particular bit of international involvement shouldn't bother either the left or the right too much. Say what you want, but Joaquín Balaguer, a nasty piece of work that he was, was still a major improvement on Trujillo under any human definition of "improvement". To the extent that there was CIA involvement, it was one of those things that, actually, justifies existence of that agency. Trujillo was a monster in anyone's book. The real crime was tolerating him that long - not getting rid of him.

He might've been thinking of Juan Bosch, though that was after JFK's death.

But yeah getting rid of Trujillo was one of the few positive CIA black ops of that era. Trujillo might've been the worst dictator in all of Latin America in the 20th century. Only ones that come close are the Somozas and the various military regimes in Guatemala.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Liberals don't really have a singular patron saint the way the Right has Ronald Reagan

FDR?

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

Liberals don't really have a singular patron saint the way the Right has Ronald Reagan

FDR?

He was too long ago. He died before most of todays politicians were born.

[ingemann]

Ich bin ein Berliner

Which of course literally means: "I am a jelly-filled sugar donut."  I think on one of the shots of Kennedy saying that, you can see Willy Brandt sitting behind him with a slightly puzzled expression on his face. 

It mean that around as much "I'm Danish" mean that I'm saying "I'm Danish pastry". To make it even more complex a Berliner Pfannkuchen is not called a Berliner in Berlin (I think it's called a Pfannkuchen), through in Lübeck where Willy Brandt was from it is called a Berliners. So everybody was fully aware what Kennedy was saying, and yes Brandt may have found the sentence slightly funny, but for the Berliners the meaning would have been clear.

[The Free North]

Some days I like to stop and think how much better the world would have been if RFK had become President.  Sigh.  He was everything his brother was, but better in every way.

He was murdered by the mob because he was a selfish arse hole.


Had JFK lived out his full term, peoples opinion of him would be very very different

[barfbag]

They like him because they don't know any better. If Kennedy were around today he'd be about as conservative as John McCain.

[tpfkaw]

They like him because they don't know any better. If Kennedy were around today he'd be about as conservative as John McCain.

In other words not at all.

[barfbag]

They like him because they don't know any better. If Kennedy were around today he'd be about as conservative as John McCain.

In other words not at all.

I meant the late John McCain. Chris Christie would be another good comparison or Romney. Kennedy would be a moderate to conservative Republican today.

[tpfkaw]

They like him because they don't know any better. If Kennedy were around today he'd be about as conservative as John McCain.

In other words not at all.

I meant the late John McCain. Chris Christie would be another good comparison or Romney. Kennedy would be a moderate to conservative Republican today.

Kennedy was an opportunist, and would be whatever would get him the most media adulation.  Like his brothers he would have effortlessly glided from conservativish Democrat to ultraliberal, a process that was of course already ongoing at the time of his death.

And, McCain has never been a conservative, unless you count his time in the House of Representatives and his first couple years in the Senate.

[barfbag]

They like him because they don't know any better. If Kennedy were around today he'd be about as conservative as John McCain.

In other words not at all.

I meant the late John McCain. Chris Christie would be another good comparison or Romney. Kennedy would be a moderate to conservative Republican today.

Kennedy was an opportunist, and would be whatever would get him the most media adulation.  Like his brothers he would have effortlessly glided from conservativish Democrat to ultraliberal, a process that was of course already ongoing at the time of his death.

And, McCain has never been a conservative, unless you count his time in the House of Representatives and his first couple years in the Senate.

In 2008 it took McCain a few months, but he finally became a conservative on things he wasn't in the past. He began supporting arctic drilling and tax cuts which he voted against during the Bush Administration. Usually it's the other way around where candidates move to the middle to become more electable. What I like is that McCain didn't change back after the election but has continued to become more conservative since representing our party for president in 2008.

[Link]

He doesn't sound very Liberal to me. So, outside of his charm and good PR and death, why is he treated as a God and beloved by the Left?

Did he have Negros chained up behind his house?  Kennedy is an interesting choice of presidents to give the modern tinted glasses retrospective tongue lashing.  How did you pick him over multiple people who have their faces on Mt Rushmore and did far worse things?

The guy was president during the early 60's.  What do you think the average white guy was like back then?

Do you think that is anywhere nearly as paradoxical as Republicans, with a straight face, calling the GOP the "party of Lincoln" and at the same time using "states rights" as their battle cry?

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

He was prez during a transformative time working his will through congress with the help of former senate leader and vp Johnson. Society owed debt to blacks and fulfilled the last of the 15th amendment through voting rights . But when leaders like his bro RF talked about urban poverty, the peace didn't last and with riots and assassinations, blacks still to this day don't have corporate power.