JFK was not a great President

Initially I wrote the notes for this during a train journey back from London and I had aimed to put it online on Nov 22nd. However I chose to differ posting it to today so as to not cause any unnecessary offence. Sorry it is so long, it was a topic I was passionate about then I expected!

Two days ago the US and the world remembered the assassination of JFK.

In death he was made near-perfect and an American martyr was created.

Jack Kennedy was already known to be a war hero, a Pulitzer Prize winner and an international peacemaker.

Now through death he was elevated, immediately becoming a ‘great’ President and a model leader to which others would aspire.

Sadly though this version of JFK is mainly myth, a story that was created and fostered throughout his life and which was heavily promoted after his death.

The reality is that, although he didn’t waste his time in the White House, Kennedy’s martyr status is an illusion.

Instead, although through tragic circumstances, his death led to one of the great Presidencies of the 20^th century as Lyndon Baines Johnson took over the Oval Office.

Kennedy

JFK was part of a family which was carefully guided towards greatness by the Patriarch, Joseph.

Jack was a war hero as his boat (PT109) was rammed and he led his men to safety. He got his medals and ran for Congress and later the Senate, representing the state of Massachusetts in both.

His time in Congress was haphazard as he didn’t like the House and didn’t spend very long in the Senate. All in all he missed one third of the votes that took place during his time there.

Along with his political work, he had a spellbinding private life, marrying the incredibly beautiful Jackie and starting a family, whilst also winning the Pulitzer Prize for a book that profiled eight Senators (which was later revealed to have been written by his speechwriter).

Eventually JFK ran for the Big Job, gained the Democratic Party nomination and adopted LBJ as his running mate.

He beat incumbent VP Richard Nixon in a close election (the TV debate didn’t nearly have the affect the myth about it claims) and settled in to the White House.

And so the time of ‘Camelot’ was created, where beautiful and happy people lived a perfect existence in Washington DC basking in the glow of the youthful and vibrant President and First Lady. 

The look was made all the more amazing when the President solved the Cuban Missile Crisis and went on a glamorous tour of Europe.

The reality however was far from what the public saw.

Firstly the President was sick. Very sick. He denied through clever semantics having Addison’s disease during the 1960 election campaign.

However his condition, which affects the immune system, was coupled with searing back that he had had for years, and meant that JFK took large amounts of steroids and painkillers each day.

Perhaps most controversially the President was treated by Max Johnson (aka Dr Feelgood) whose methods were opposed by many medical professionals at the time.

Johnson would load up his patients (others included Marilyn Monroe and Elvis) with amphetamines without asking why they were needed or warning about health issues the treatment might cause.

Secondly JFK was not the family man that he liked to be portrayed as. Having followed his father’s advice to “get laid as often as possible” his conquests included the aforementioned Monroe and Marlene Dietrich along with several incredibly attractive secretaries.

Jackie endured the infidelity and their marriage was often saved due to the clear care they had for each other (witness Jackie’s reaction after JFK’s death), but the reality was that Kennedy traded in image. He needed to be seen to be a family man, and Jackie played the part perfectly.

I’m not saying that his being ill or sleeping around didn’t mean that he couldn’t be President, merely that he actively lived a different life from the one that was presented.

Politics based on style over substance already existed, but it was wholeheartedly embraced by the Kennedy team and the result is that sadly it remains with us to this day.

As for actual policies, JFK can claim to have helped the case for civil rights through an important speech that was broadcast on the major networks.

However domestically he did very little and his foreign policy isn’t much more impressive.

The moment that people refer to is the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it must be said that it was a massively important episode which he helped defuse, ending a stand-off that brought the Cold War closest to open hostilities.

However it must also be recognised that JFK helped create the problem through the Bay of Pigs fiasco the year before, where he tacitly supported an attempted coup against Castro but refused to give much US support to it.

1,600 dissidents invaded and several hundred were killed or executed alongside their CIA handlers. 1,200 eventually returned to the US but only after $500m was sent in food aid, a move that in essence helped increase the popularity of the regime Kennedy had hoped to topple.

Kennedy later announced a blockage of Cuba (a precursor to the illegal blockade the US still imposes today) but only after a friend managed to smuggle 1,200 of his favourite cigars out of Havana.

It is important to add that whilst Soviet missiles were removed from Cuba with great fanfare, the similar removal of US missiles from Turkey was done in secret.

Kennedy appeared as the victorious peacemaker, when in fact he helped create the problem and was dishonest about the solution.

Elsewhere on the foreign front JFK supported the South Vietnamese government and then supported their overthrow in a military coup which removed any democratic element from Saigon.

His further commitment of US troops only helped further the conflict, creating headaches for future Presidents.

Perhaps his biggest impact was out of this world when he committed the US to the space race and started off the Apollo project in 1961 when NASA hadn’t even got a man into orbit.

The agency’s budget was boosted by 30% and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the “magnificent desolation” of the lunar surface on July 20 1969.

This project though was based on an idea that Kennedy’s VP Lyndon Baines Johnson had, but more of that in my next post.

Overall therefore JFK’s legacy is shaky – pre-Presidency he was not an effective representative, whilst in the White House domestically his policy was very poor and when it came to foreign affairs he defused a potential nuclear war he had helped create and basked in the resulting glory during a European tour.

In short he was not nearly as effective as many biographers would want us to think.

I’m aware that I’ve been overly harsh in this and I don’t want to deny that JFK did some remarkable things. He just simply was not a great President, which people seem to just not realise.

Something in the human condition wants to us to think that deaths happen for a reason, something which is especially true when the death is of a young and supposedly ‘great’ individual.

However that just simply isn’t the case with JFK, and so the gloss of martyrdom that his death has been given doesn’t really ring true.

Perhaps though whilst his Presidency was ineffective, there is something that can be taken from his death which can so easily be forgotten.

After all, whilst done in the most brutal and unexpected way, Jack’s death summoned in the Presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the man who created and passed some of the greatest legislation in US history and the man who almost certainly wouldn’t have become President had JFK have lived through one (and possible two) terms.

My next post will have a look over the highs and lows of LBJ’s time in power, but I hope I make it clear that he was a remarkably effective (and flawed) leader.

LBJ is my favourite US President of the 20^th century, so don’t expect an unbiased write up!

Finally, while I’m here, just to put it down but not to go into it, there was no conspiracy within the government over the JFK assassination, so Alec Baldwin, Oliver Stone and others can shut up (my time in the Debate Society was not wasted!).

Debate warmly encouraged.