Roosevelt's New Deal Coalition dominated the Democratic party which was a solidly pro-Liberal group in the North and a Dixiecrat haven in the South (who could be pulled along by the nose on certain things they'd otherwise oppose by the Yankees). Johnson had been outspokenly pro-Civil Rights, so it was not Nixon-Goes-to-China save that he was a Southerner (compared to Nixon who was a hardline anti-Communist). Likewise, Johnson is going to exist regardless, and it wasn't just Johnson who got that bill passed since there were a heck of a lot of political powerhouses on board, though LBJ was the primary.Sure -- AFTER Kennedy, not before. I lived through that era, worked for Johnson in the '64 election. It took an LBJ presidency to get the Civil Rights Act passed -- that was the Nixon-going-to-China moment. Kennedy could no more have gotten that bill passed than he could have sprouted wings and flown to the moon. And to say that the Democratic Party "was no more hardline against communism than the GOP" pretty much proves my point concerning the party's political positions then versus now.
And being anti-Communist is not moving anywhere away from being a Left wing group politically and to think so is misguided.
The Democrats are about as far left today as Nixon due to Reagan; the idea that they are so far left today from what it was in the 1960's is what is laughable. A group that would fear the tenets of the New Deal Coalition as being too radical for the American voter were it proposed to them today is not any where further left than they were in 1960. Likewise, JFK still equates relatively to everything the Democrats support today. The only way the Democratic party has moved left relatively is with the loss of the Conservative Dixiecrats who had always been somewhat of an anchor.Absolutely not. Reagan may have moved political sensibilities BACK to the right, but to say that the whole political system of the early-mid-60s "was further left than today" is laughable. The Democratic Party of today has moved so far to the left from that era that it would not recognize Kennedy as a member, as much as it lionizes his memory.
Political and cultural standards are never fully intertwined and only intertwined in the way that one can influence certain areas of the other (IE, anything political that involves cultural issues). IE, you can think that black people are unequal and support the New Deal as many did. Hell, Goldwater was for black equality but didn't support Civil Rights legislation.Again, I have to ask: Are you serious or just trolling? Political and cultural conservatism are inevitably intertwined. You almost never see one without the other. It took a freaking Supreme Court opinion to allow freedom of expression in schools. Or doesn't Abe Fortas's phrase about students not "shed[ding] their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse door" ring a bell? The Maine Supreme Court had to rule on a case at the high school in Belfast before boys were allowed to wear long hair and mustashes.
I'm not confusing anything. The "Leave it to Beaver" picture of reality for those days is BS. Folks had sex rather than sleeping in separate beds and having the stork bring a baby; people swore, and so on. It's simply that the picture of what was opportune was different and people weren't supposed to talk about anything "untoward" in civil society and try their best to avoid it or hide it away otherwise, but people frequently broke the rules or did naughty things through the cracks of those guidelines. It was like a mask over a face underneath.Again, simply laughable. You're confusing the youth and antiwar movement of the '60s and early '70s, which never involved more than a small but very noticeable percentage of that group, with the society at large.
It did haunt him; however, public sentiment by and large was forgiving on the issue, and largely because he took the blame for it.Only in his obituaries. It haunted him throughout his term while he was alive. As I said, I lived through that era. If Kennedy had remained alive, the Republican nominee in 1964 (there's no assurance that it would have been Goldwater if Kennedy had lived) would have sliced him to ribbons over Bay of Pigs. I can see it now, the ads with one-armed Bay of Pigs veterans blaming JFK.
There was a relative knowledge of Vietnam, but nowhere near what it would become. I'm not ignorant of Vietnam gaining media and public focus as Kennedy began to make it a larger issue. However, focus was increased by the Johnson administration to a far more massive degree than anything before. It was essentially like, say, Afghanistan. There is minimalist knowledge and focus before any issue, growing and focus knowledge as it became an issue, and massive knowledge and focus when it became a major issue. However, there was a key difference between growing and limited knowledge and focus and the latter massive focus. And, save for spanking the Ruskies somehow, the country could care about most of Vietnam.Again, you're looking at the early-mid-1960s from a 2009 perspective, and that is inaccurate. The American public was acutely aware of South Vietnam, a sensibility that had been sharpened by the loss of North Vietnam in the 1950s and Dr. Tom Dooley's very popular 1956 book about the evacuation of the north, Deliver Us From Evil.
There was a belief in fighting Communism (every Cold war President including Kennedy had that and to say otherwise would be ridiculous given his track record), but that did not entail a bunch of "Vietnam's" across the globe. It entailed containment via support to nations struggling against the Red Menace. And bad feelings about Vietnam were already present, though obviously not the overriding smack in the face you get when you have half a million troops in the nation, constant death, and no sign of more than stalemate. The United States had already faced Korea, which had gained rather unpopular sentiment among the public under Truman and which we won by only a hair in and of itself, and did not want to face another Korea with Southeast Asia. Likewise, the withdrawal was not wholly to show any frustration with South Vietnam's government, though it was an initial intention (Diem was already dead when it was still on the books). And there was further discussion about withdrawal beyond that which Kennedy discussed with McNamara and those near him, which was out of a belief that the US needed a way to get out and largely because many feared another Korea. And withdrawal of a combat would have entailed continued support per Containment policy, but Containment never necessarily entailed war.Norton, I think you seriously misread both Kennedy and the general tenor of the times. You're conflating the political, social, and cultural landscape of the first half of the sixties with the latter part of the decade. Fighting communism was THE overriding public concern in the early and mid-1960s. The post-Missile Crisis American public wanted communism stopped and conquered. McNamara was a true-blue hawk on the issue. The doubts and accommodation about Vietnam didn't come along until '68 and later, both politically and in the larger social culture. Kennedy's withdrawl of less than 1,000 troops from Vietnam was less than 10 percent of the US force on the ground there, and it was done more to send a message to the Vietnamese government than to signal any larger policy change on his part.
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Anyway, who'd be VPs in 1968 in a Terry Sanford/George Romney contest.
EDIT: Somehow half this post got deleted so some revisions may be missing.
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