We remember another anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination this week.
It's time for another look at President Kennedy’s legacy as Alan Brinkley wrote a few years ago:
President Kennedy spent less than three years in the White House. His first year was a disaster, as he himself acknowledged. The Bay of Pigs invasion of Communist Cuba was only the first in a series of failed efforts to undo Fidel Castro’s regime.So how long will this “sainthood” of President Kennedy continue? Or are we finally going to get a more objective view?
His 1961 summit meeting in Vienna with the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was a humiliating experience. Most of his legislative proposals died on Capitol Hill.
Yet he was also responsible for some extraordinary accomplishments.
The most important, and most famous, was his adept management of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, widely considered the most perilous moment since World War II.
Most of his military advisers — and they were not alone — believed the United States should bomb the missile pads that the Soviet Union was stationing in Cuba.
Kennedy, aware of the danger of escalating the crisis, instead ordered a blockade of Soviet ships.
In the end, a peaceful agreement was reached. Afterward, both Kennedy and Khrushchev began to soften the relationship between Washington and Moscow.
Maybe it will start now as more allegations of sexual misconduct come out against politicians. It’s obvious that President Kennedy had a problem with women, too.
My bottom line is that President Kennedy should be viewed as a politician and not as a saint, as he has been for many years.
A second look at the Kennedy record is overdue and necessary.
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