What about Kennedy?

[BigD9146gt]

I was talking recently to someone much older than I. For reference, i'm 24. Anyways, we were talking about Bush and how people hate him. He then precceded to laugh and tell me of what he remembered from Kennedy's days in office.

He said during the Cuban Missile Chrisis, thousands of US citizens were in the streets protesting and screaming at the tops of their lungs about how much JFK was such a horrible human being and he was giong to end the world yada yada. My friend is from a small northern California town, but never the less, this is what he saw happened across the nation threw the news. Now JFK was one of the most beloved presidents to walk this country.

Now i'm not saying Bush is going to be beloved one day, but aren't past inncodents interesting?

Was I ill-informed? I may of miss understood why everyone was mad, but they were mad right?

[JSDSKI]

Nope. Don't remember that at all. No anger. No marching in the streets. No National Guard. Nothing like that at all. Just older people watching TV with worried looks on their faces.

[WOODPIE]

I agree with JSDSKI. I was eleven years old at the time, and the only emotion I recall is fear. My best friend and I went down into the woods and started digging a fallout shelter. It's a helluva thing for two small boys to be thinking about.

If there were huge crowds in the streets protesting, I wasn't made aware of them.

It's probably true Kennedy has acheived sainthood over the years, but I think he was a dam fine man to begin with.

Ed

[pohsche]

I was there and I don't remember that happening. I do remember being awakened by blaring sirens when I lived in Germany at the time. I spent many a night that October in the Basement of the quarters on Sembach Air Force Base. By the way, the base was in charge of nuke missle maintenance. Can you say ground zero.

Alan Poh
'77 Carrera 3.0

[pwd72s]

IMHO, Lee Harvey Oswald made Kennedy a hero. His management policies sure as hell didn't. Not IMHO...Let us begin by those he abandoned when the bay of pigs didn't work out as he had planned...

[JSDSKI]

I thought CIA and Cuban exiles planned Bay of Pigs. And that Kennedy signed off on it, as opposed to being responsible for operational planning and control. Didn't he take the heat for it when it failed?

[Moses]

The Bay of Pigs fiasco would have been career ending for most politicians.

As the groundswell of public outrage grew, JFK held a press conference and said he had made a terrible mistake and accepted full responsibility. He appeared to have tears in his eyes at the time. JFK's candor completely disarmed his critics and his humility gained him much public support.

[rrpjr]

There was a very strong strain of hate against JFK. It wasn't as loud as it was virulent, but certainly a good portion of America thought he was reckless and "uppity" young pretender, a tool of the Catholic Church, a misguided progressive. Many segregationists in the South hated him after some of the showdowns between his administration and local authorities when he forced colleges and schools to admit blacks. He won an election almost as close as Bush vs. Gore in 2000, and some thought he'd stolen it and despised him for that as well.

Your friend's larger point is well taken. Every president has at least 40% of the people and perhaps more opposed to him at one point or another, and some fiercely. And rarely are a president's accomplishments, or setbacks for that matter, fully understood or appreciated during his term. It takes time to make such judgments. And yes, there are always those who claim the sky is falling, and this or that president will be the ruin of the country.

[DannoXYZ]

He also put his brother Robert in charge of a new shadow government operation to manage the news-media so that the embarrassment of a Bay-of-Pigs like incident wouldn't happen again.

He contemplated cutting back on the CIA since they bungled the BoP operation. He wanted to abolish the Federal Reserve and remove the horrendous debt the U.S. Government and citizens owed the Rothchilds. Within a month, he was dead... coincidence? I think not...

[Mule]

Some people "thought' Kennedy stole the election? Yeah, except for the Chicago mob, who knew he stole it.

[BigD9146gt]

Thanks for the input guys.

[tabs]

My Daddy was an Aerospace Engineer..who worked on many of the Missle systems in the 50's through the 70's....he had even worked on an Atomic Bomb Simulation. So he had an understanding of destructive capabilities of a Nuclear Weapon, and living in the Greater Los Angeles area knew we would be toast , so we did vitually nothing to prepare for a possible war.....

The Chicago mob did give JFK the election...and you might say still gives the Democrats the State...

JFK and RFK weren't the saints they were made out to be....Sirhan Sirhan said the reason why he shot RFK was that he was angry and felt betrayed when Kennedy shifted his support from the Palesteinians to the Israelies in the 1967 war...in effect here was a man who was supposed to be for the downtrodden and suddenly changes sides and supports the oppressors..

[Hugh R]

My dad was a nuclear engineer at MIT in Massachusetts. We built a bomb shelter out of a railroad tanker, buried it 15 feet under ground and had a hand crank air intake system with filters and we had food and water for something like a year. By 1965 it was no longer maintained.