If Kennedy survives, do we like him?

Bill: I wouldn't doubt a Hughes connection. Bobby's Justice Department conducted a meticulous probe in 1962, but was unable to find evidence solid enough to indict Donald or even Hannah Nixon. Nixon later said "that little bastard wanted to criminally indict my mother." If things turned up, then Nixon would be facing Archie Cox in court, as Cox was then SG. That could look like a political prosecution, as it largely was. If it came to it, Nixon would easily outperform RFK in court, because Nixon was the better lawyer without question in my mind.
 
Civics Lesson

However, some point out like you said that JFK wasn't known to reach out across party lines and wheel and deal with Pentagon top brass like LBJ did, he was the Majority Speaker of the House after all.
LBJ was Senate Majority Leader, an office that can only be held by a voting US Senator, but he does not preside over the Senate. That is the job of the Vice-President of the US (who can only vote to break ties), or in his absence the Senate President Pro Tempore (the senior member of the majority party in the Senate). The US House of Representatives has the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives (3rd in line of succession to the US Presidency) as the senior majority officer in that chamber. He presides over that chamber and as a congressman is a voting member. His immediate subordinate is the US House Majority Leader.

This is why during the President's State of the Union address he has sitting behind him the US Vice-President and Speaker of the House.

PS. SHAME on you RogueBeaver for not catching this 1st!:p:p:p
 
Well, given the Declassified Docs Chomsky accessed for his book Rethinking Camelot regarding Kennedy's approval for various CIA coups in Brazil and the Dominican republic as well as the Pentagon Papers clearly show Chomsky had no intent of withdrawing from vietnam, i highly doubt that he'd bring america into a utopia and somehow pull of a joint moonshot.

I think Americans would regard him as another Nixon, who got away with it this time.

A good link: http://www.youtube.com/user/capitalistholocaust
 
Well, given the Declassified Docs Chomsky accessed for his book Rethinking Camelot regarding Kennedy's approval for various CIA coups in Brazil and the Dominican republic as well as the Pentagon Papers clearly show Chomsky had no intent of withdrawing from vietnam, i highly doubt that he'd bring america into a utopia and somehow pull of a joint moonshot.

I think Americans would regard him as another Nixon, who got away with it this time.

A good link: http://www.youtube.com/user/capitalistholocaust

According Dallek, who had access to pretty much everything of JFK, and who isn't a jaded and niche anarcho-socialist-libertarian hodgepodge (sorry, but Chomsky is a bit out there), Chomsky is nowhere near the mark. Chomsky extrapolates from what he has, what he wanted to see, and a preconception. This is the overreactinary, jaded, cynical junk I was talking about, along with Dark Side of Camelot, although admittedly more scholarly.

You need to understand the actual man and context, and the context of the Cold war. I'd also like to note that the US never became bogged down in an Americanized quagmire in Brazil, or the Dominican Republic, or various nations where ideological forces were struggling. They were resolved by proxy or diplomacy.

The Joint Moonshot is not something some starry eyed generation made up. Kennedy had discussed it, and proposed it on two occasions with Khrushchev, who was receptive and amicable toward the concept. The problem is, Congress pushed through legislation that would cut NASA funding if there was a joint moon effort (which Kennedy was fighting at the time of his death). Kennedy did have an intent of withdrawing from Vietnam (unless various members of his administration lied over the course of 40 years, and in the face of facts, actions, understanding of the conflict, foreign policy experience, attempts to address these sort of problems with diplomacy so as to avoid conflict, and his own personality, he ex-deus-machina decided to just go against it all and do it), and basically/roughly would have been Johnson domestically, sans Vietnam, with a bit of variation, and with an added prospect of various foreign matters Johnson never dealt with.
 
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How come then that Noam Chomsky is the most quoted scholar alive, who uses declassified documents as well as the internal record? And did you check the link as well? And what about all those 5 star reviews that chomsky's books get on Amazon? Those must count for something regarding Chomsky.
 

Larrikin

Banned
Chomsky

Chomsky is brilliant in linguistics, has been pretty much untouchable there for decades. Outside of his area he is a rabid anarcho-syndic dunce.

The reason he gets so much loving is because the "intelligentsia*" thinks he is the greatest thing since Lenin.

*"intelligentsia" = useful idiots, Lenin's favourite Westerners.
 
Avalon, good luck trying to get through to any rabid Chomsky-hater. Esp when they are so confused their leftist-bashing that they think very different ideologies of Communism and anarchism are the same.

Chomsky's rep within academia and among activists of a wide variety of stripes (from anarchists like himself all the way to populist conservatives) is pretty secure and immune to silly attempts to demonize him. He gets quoted within fields ranging from history to poli sci to sociology to...basically all the social sciences and humanities, for his landmark work on the use of propaganda within democracies, that propaganda plays the same role within a democracy that repression does within a dictatorship, to keep elites in power. When you make paradigm changing work like he's done, no amount of name calling can undermine that.

Talking about reputations in academia kind of brings me back to the main thread: I suspect, like others here, that the general public would think of JFK as much like LBJ. But I see no reason why scholars would think any differently of Kennedy if he survives than they do today, as a Cold Warrior above all else. Outside of Schlesinger, not many historians buy into the Camelot mythos. And since he likely would drag the US further into Vietnam, there's little reason the Camelot mythos would ever even be created.
 
I don't want this to become a Chomsky flamewar :)o), but I'll say that most historians have concluded that the most likely prospect was continuation of JFK's OTL "Vietnamization" policy. No American boots on the ground. Which was also, beneath the tactical pivoting, RFK's own position in '68. I've given the "we'd cross that bridge when we came to it" quote already.
 
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Bumping for further discussion. I agree with AmInd :)eek::D) on Camelot and especially Schlesinger. RFK was harder on himself than Schlesinger was, which says a lot about Arthur's overdrawn, maple-syrupy-sappy biography of Bobby. (which I replaced a while back)
 
This is off-topic, but what are some of the better biographies on JFK and RFK. I found one on RFK a few weeks ago at the library, but it claimed that he had an affair with Marilyn Monroe, which RougueBeaver and Emperor Norton I have both told me isn't true, so I had to doubt if it was reliable. :)
 
For JFK, the definitive one is An Unfinished Life by Bob Dallek. He had access to everything, including the medical records that had been previously sealed. For RFK, it's Robert Kennedy: His Life by Evan Thomas- who also had full access to the RFK Papers. Only Schlesinger, who was commissioned by Ethel, also had that privilege.

Anything about RFK and Monroe or Jackie (no, I'm not making that up) is BS. No respected historian endorses that view, because that's all anonymous quoting of "sightings". Many of those invented liaisons took place when they were hundreds of miles apart. Perhaps the best evidence is that J. Edgar Hoover, who tried his hardest to get dirt on Bobby, never found even a trace of impropriety. Leaving aside his Puritan moral code and devotion for a minute: Bobby had 10 kids in 18 years of marriage. I don't think outsourcing was required. Now you can argue about JFK and Marilyn, which as Dallek says "though the truth will likely never be known, the phone records suggest more than a passing acquaintance."

From the FAQ:

Had an affair with Marilyn Monroe: William Sullivan: “Although Hoover was desperately trying to catch Bobby Kennedy red-handed at anything, he never did. Kennedy was almost a Puritan. We used to watch him at parties, where he would order one glass of scotch and still be sipping from the same glass two hours later. The stories about Bobby Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe were just stories. The original story was invented by a so-called journalist, a right-wing zealot who had a history of spinning wild yarns. It spread like wildfire, of course, and J. Edgar Hoover was right there, gleefully fanning the flames.”

Had an affair with Jackie Kennedy after his brother's death: “Beneath contempt”- Schlesinger. This absurd theory can be found in the recent book “Bobby and Jackie” which is worse than “Dark Side of Camelot” because the writer is a hack who has been universally condemned by Kennedy authorities like Doris Kearns Goodwin or Robert Dallek. Completely out of character for both of them.
 
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Thanks for the info RougueBeaver. :)

Actually, now that I recall, I think that book I found on RFK alos mentioned him having an affair with Jackie, so I'll be sure to avoid it in the future. :rolleyes:
 
Those are believed because it makes a good story. That's what they are: myths that have no basis in reality. I have never seen one of those allegations backed up by either a serious author or a sourced quote. Also, I've found people have trouble believing that Bobby was "clean" when the rest of his family (except Sarge Shriver) wasn't.
 

Red Wolf

Banned
I think if JFK had survived he wouldn't have been nearly as successful at implementing Civil Rights reforms as LBJ because he didn't have LBJ's skills at getting things through Congress and also because the death of JFK helped LBJ immensely.

That said, while I do agree with those who think it's a bit premature to believe that under JFK we'd completely avoid the Vietnam War, his and his staff's relations with the Pentagon were much more antagonistic than LBJ's and JFK felt(unfairly IMHO) that he was burned badly by the military over the Bay of Pigs. As a result, I think he wouldn't have been nearly as quick as LBJ to go from 16,000 military advisors in Vietnam to an army of 250,000.

As far as Chomsky goes, I don't want to get into a pissing contest over him, but him being heavily quoted and having "five star reviews on Amazon" doesn't prove he's reliable, just that he has a flair for juicy quotes and has a loyal following.

Personally, I think of him as a left-wing version of Paul Johnson but YMMV.
 

Red Wolf

Banned
Thanks for the info RougueBeaver. :)

Actually, now that I recall, I think that book I found on RFK alos mentioned him having an affair with Jackie, so I'll be sure to avoid it in the future. :rolleyes:

I'm no fan of JFK, though I do like Bobby, flawed as he was, but I find the idea of him and Jackie having an affair utterly preposterous.
 
Avalon, good luck trying to get through to any rabid Chomsky-hater. Esp when they are so confused their leftist-bashing that they think very different ideologies of Communism and anarchism are the same.
I don't rabidly hate Noam Chomsky. I hate it when people drag him out like he's the messiah who knows whats really going on to all we ignorant conformists in the mainstream.

Chomsky's rep within academia and among activists of a wide variety of stripes (from anarchists like himself all the way to populist conservatives) is pretty secure and immune to silly attempts to demonize him. He gets quoted within fields ranging from history to poli sci to sociology to...basically all the social sciences and humanities, for his landmark work on the use of propaganda within democracies, that propaganda plays the same role within a democracy that repression does within a dictatorship, to keep elites in power. When you make paradigm changing work like he's done, no amount of name calling can undermine that.
Noam Chomsky is a cynic, plain and simple, and he has a bit of that conspiratorial flavor to him as well.

Talking about reputations in academia kind of brings me back to the main thread: I suspect, like others here, that the general public would think of JFK as much like LBJ. But I see no reason why scholars would think any differently of Kennedy if he survives than they do today, as a Cold Warrior above all else. Outside of Schlesinger, not many historians buy into the Camelot mythos. And since he likely would drag the US further into Vietnam, there's little reason the Camelot mythos would ever even be created.
Not many buy into the mythos, but most don't buy into the "JFK is the devil line" kinda line.

JFK was not on the hawkish end of the administration, as Chomsky claims. Kennedy thought military men were idiots (all brawn, no brains, and with crazy ideas like not signing a test ban treaty with the USSR because they'd cheat by testing missiles behind the Moon), thought matters should be resolved with diplomacy rather than military force wherever possible (Cuban Missile Crisis), was working toward cooling Cold war tensions with the Communist powers, and was fully aware, both because of the quagmire the US had barely won in Korea and of past insurgencies he knew of, that Vietnam -which the South was already doing poorly in- could drag the US down, and that Vietnam -if for nothing else- should remain the fight of the Vietnamese with the US only giving a supportive role in form of aid and supplies as it would do anywhere else. To say he would go guns a-blazing into Vietnam is frankly ignorant of the man and goes totally against the course of events up to the time, frankly.

And as said before, Vietnam was not a blackhole for the US. There was no predestination for the US Americanizing the war, and it occurred because of the situation snowballing under Johnson's because of factors that played on Johnson foibles. The US, under many other possible Presidents for that time, could easily have avoided Vietnam as an American war, and have the US as involved only as much as it was in other proxy regions where it supported one side against another but was never ensnared in a war in those regions. Again, a problem with historiography is we tend to act like anything that did happen was destined to happen and larger than anything else around it.

I think if JFK had survived he wouldn't have been nearly as successful at implementing Civil Rights reforms as LBJ because he didn't have LBJ's skills at getting things through Congress and also because the death of JFK helped LBJ immensely.
A few points. Firstly, a majority of Congress-people before Kennedy was assassinated had said they would vote through Civil Rights legislation, so it's likely to go through regardless. Two, Congress deserves a lot of credit for pushing through that legislation and getting people on board, just as much as any President (if not, perhaps, more so). Three, he has a Democratic majority legislature. Four, JFK, if memory recalls, did have skills in getting people on board, and -if all else fails- could be forced to unleash Lyndon (though he'd be pretty wary to do it; Kennedy feared that if he gave LBJ and inch, he'd take a mile and start to take over the whole show). Five, there were cultural and social factors that were propelling those kinds of reforms through we must be aware of.

That said, while I do agree with those who think it's a bit premature to believe that under JFK we'd completely avoid the Vietnam War, his and his staff's relations with the Pentagon were much more antagonistic than LBJ's and JFK felt(unfairly IMHO) that he was burned badly by the military over the Bay of Pigs. As a result, I think he wouldn't have been nearly as quick as LBJ to go from 16,000 military advisors in Vietnam to an army of 250,000.
Bay of Pigs did not give Kennedy an axe to grind and a need to prove himself. Much the opposite. It largely made him P.O.'d at the military and CIA gang that had proposed this thing to him, and more wary to pay any attention to them.

Kennedy discussed withdrawal with members of his inner circle (and, again, asked McNamara to draw up a plan for withdrawal by '65), stifled information getting to the newsmen in Saigon so as not to create a public discussion that would force him to up the ante, was looking to cool tensions with the USSR, and was seeking alternatives to the US policy in/toward Vietnam which wasn't working. Kennedy also believed in using diplomacy before military might, and there were a number of options of the table. Again, only 37% of people paid any attention to Vietnam, and of that the majority believed it would end in stalemate or the fall of Saigon.

As for Vietnam, what Kennedy would have done after November of 1963 now seems increasingly clear, thanks not only to the testimony of his former aides but also to a growing documentary public record. Here, too, his wariness of his military chiefs' advice had begun to shape his outlook.
Most of his advisers in the Pentagon wanted to increase U.S. involvement in Vietnam's civil war. But Kennedy would have preferred a settlement like the one he had reached in Laos, whereby Moscow and Washington agreed to restrain the factions battling for control of the country. With Hanoi and Saigon unwilling to reach a truce, U.S. fears of losing South Vietnam to communism forced Kennedy to escalate America's economic and military commitments—providing Ngo Dinh Diem's regime with more money, equipment, and advisers to fight the Vietcong. Still, any suggestion that the conflict should become a war fought principally by U.S. troops was directly at odds with Kennedy's convictions about America's self-interest.
Admittedly, Kennedy wanted a military tool with which to combat communist insurgencies in Asia and Latin America. The creation of the Green Berets, in 1961, to meet the communist threat in Vietnam and elsewhere, was an indication of how determined he was to use limited force in the contest with Moscow for Third World client states. It is true, too, that the Kennedy Administration repeatedly announced America's determination to preserve South Vietnam's independence. In February of 1962 Robert Kennedy declared, "We are going to win in Vietnam. We will remain here until we do win." And JFK was willing to subsidize the expansion of the South Vietnamese military and to have more than 16,000 members of the U.S. military advising and directing Vietnamese combat operations—a project that would cost some American lives. Moreover, in August of 1963 Kennedy reluctantly signed off on a plot to have Vietnamese generals overthrow Diem's government, which had lost popular support and seemed certain to lose the civil war. But although all this risked greater U.S. responsibility for the fate of South Vietnam, Kennedy did not see it as leading—and certainly did not want it to lead—to the Americanization of the war. Indeed, his support for a coup rested on the hope that it would help South Vietnam to defeat the Vietcong and would greatly reduce the need for ongoing military support. And public statements like RFK's were more a device for bolstering Saigon's morale and intimidating the communists than a reliable expression of intentions—as the President's actions in Vietnam, especially in 1963, would show.
Kennedy had seen the Boer War, the Russo-Finnish conflict, and the Korean War as cautionary tales against getting bogged down in Cuba; now he perceived that the lessons of those wars applied even more strongly in Vietnam, a less familiar, more distant land with political crosscurrents even more formidable than those presented by Havana. He feared that U.S. involvement would produce irresistible pressure to do more and more. "The troops will march in; the bands will play; the crowds will cheer," he told Arthur Schlesinger, "and in four days everyone will have forgotten. Then we will be told we have to send in more troops. It's like taking a drink. The effect wears off, and you have to take another."
Throughout his tenure in the White House, Kennedy consistently resisted proposals to have U.S. forces take over the war. In November of 1961 Maxwell Taylor, a Kennedy military confidant, reported at a meeting of Administration and military officials that Kennedy was "instinctively against introduction of U.S. forces." According to notes taken at a meeting of the National Security Council that same month, Kennedy "expressed the fear of becoming involved simultaneously on two fronts on opposite sides of the world," and "questioned the wisdom of involvement in Viet Nam since the basis thereof is not completely clear." JFK thought that whereas in Korea the United States had responded to a case of clear aggression, the conflict in Vietnam was, according to the NSC notes, "more obscure and less flagrant." He believed that any unilateral commitment on our part would produce "sharp domestic partisan criticism as well as strong objections from other nations ... [and] could even make leading Democrats wary of proposed activities in the Far East."
From the summer of 1962 to the fall of 1963 Kennedy directed Robert McNamara to chart plans for a systematic withdrawal from Vietnam by 1965. Possibly as a concession to his own reluctance to abandon South Vietnam before its survival was assured, McNamara drew up a five-year schedule for the reduction of U.S. forces. He did not anticipate a full departure until 1968, when he expected to remove the last 1,500 advisers and reduce military aid to $40.8 million—less than a quarter of the sum spent in 1962.
Further evidence of Kennedy's intentions toward Vietnam comes in a backhanded but telling way from his dealings with the U.S. press corps in Saigon. The conventional wisdom is that Kennedy tried to censor news stories from Vietnam for fear that they would turn American public opinion against the war effort. And the press was indeed critical of the Administration's determination to hide the extent of U.S. involvement and its inability either to discourage Diem from repressing Buddhist dissenters or to compel him to fight the North Vietnamese aggressively. But the real reason Kennedy was intent on repressing these negative reports was not to prevent the spread of anti-war sentiment but, rather, to avert demands for escalation.
According to poll data from the period, few Americans were following the situation in Vietnam. By 1962 Kennedy had decided that to sustain what he believed was the proper level of commitment in the region—enough to keep South Vietnam afloat without any involvement of U.S. troops or direct military action—he needed to keep public attention to a minimum. He recognized that public debate might arouse the political left to call for total withdrawal. But the greater danger, he seemed to believe, was that people would think America was fighting too halfheartedly: press accounts that called attention to the U.S. military's limited advisory role might lead evangelical anti-communists on the political right to demand that involvement be increased.
In April of 1962 Averell Harriman, the assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs, directed the U.S. embassy in Saigon to lower America's profile in the conflict as much as possible. The press had begun describing the struggle as more an American than a Vietnamese war. The names of combat operations, such as "Sunrise" and "Farmgate," suggested U.S. planning, and American advisers were making themselves too conspicuous. Reports that a large group of U.S. colonels and civilians had inspected a stockade in Operation Sunrise were a case in point. "Why do large groups of Americans inspect anything?" Harriman asked in a memo. Moreover, U.S. officers were talking too freely about their role in planning operations. "It cannot be overstressed," Harriman declared, "that the conduct and utterances public and private of all U.S. personnel must reflect the basic policy of this government that we are in full support of Viet-Nam but we do not assume responsibility for Viet-Nam's war with the Viet Cong."
In September of 1963 Kennedy was still trying to avert widespread public discussion of America's role in the conflict. He instructed the State Department's public-affairs officer, Robert Manning, to avoid press interviews and television appearances on the subject. When Manning reported in a memo to Kennedy that Roger Hilsman, the director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence, had been turning down calls from the press and TV stations, the President agreed that was wise.
In October, Kennedy asked Arthur Sulzberger, the newly appointed publisher of The New York Times, to remove the reporter David Halberstam from Saigon, where Halberstam was writing irrefutable accounts of U.S.-South Vietnamese failings in the war and implying that greater American involvement was necessary. (Halberstam, although he would later turn against the war, took the same position in his 1965 book The Making of a Quagmire.) Sulzberger refused.
Had Kennedy believed that it was more essential to stop a communist advance in Vietnam than to restrict America's part in the fighting, he surely would have touted the Administration's efforts to preserve Saigon's autonomy—and would have been more supportive of Halberstam and other reporters in their efforts to make the case for more-effective U.S. involvement. As a student of America's role in World Wars I and II and Korea, Kennedy knew that fighting a costly foreign war depended on steady public commitment, which could come only after convincing Americans of the country's vital stake in the conflict. The converse, as he saw it, given the political context, was that obscuring America's role and muting public discussion would help him to preserve the flexibility to reduce U.S. involvement or maintain it at the same level. (This is what Lyndon Johnson failed to understand. He, too, suppressed information about what the United States was doing in Indochina, but he did so in the mistaken belief that it would make it easier for him to intensify U.S. involvement. His effort to pursue this course without adequate public support ultimately doomed his presidency.)
After the November 1963 coup in Saigon that took Diem's life, Kennedy regretted encouraging an action that, he now believed, would deepen rather than reduce U.S. participation in Vietnamese affairs. In a tape recording made in the Oval Office on November 4, he said, "I feel that we [at the White House] must bear a good deal of responsibility for it, beginning with our cable of early August in which we suggested the coup. In my judgment that wire was badly drafted. It should never have been sent on a Saturday. I should not have given my consent to it without a roundtable conference at which McNamara and Taylor could have presented their views. While we did redress that balance in later wires, that first wire encouraged [Ambassador Henry Cabot] Lodge along a course to which he was in any case inclined ... The question now is whether the generals can stay together and build a stable government or whether ... public opinion in Saigon, the intellectuals, students, et cetera, will turn on this government as repressive and undemocratic in the not too distant future." More than ever, Kennedy seemed to feel that U.S. involvement in so unstable a country was a poor idea.
In an undated, unsigned memo in the President's office files from the late summer or fall of 1963 (possibly even after November 1), an Administration official provided "Observations on Vietnam and Cuba." Since the Soviets seemed to feel trapped in Cuba and we in Vietnam, this official asked, might it not make sense to invite Charles de Gaulle, the President of France, who maintained calculated relations with both Cold War superpowers, to propose a swap with the Soviets? (In other words, in exchange for the Soviets' leaving Cuba, the Americans would leave Vietnam.) Whether Kennedy ever saw this memo, or what reaction he might have had to it, is unknown. Nonetheless, it is clear that by November of 1963 Kennedy welcomed suggestions for an alternative to a Vietnam policy that had had limited success. On November 20, the day before he left on his fateful trip to Texas, Kennedy told Michael Forrestal, a senior staff member on the National Security Council and an assistant to the President on Far Eastern affairs, that at the start of 1964 he wanted him to organize "an in-depth study of every possible option we've got in Vietnam, including how to get out of there." He said, "We have to review this whole thing from the bottom to the top."
If Kennedy was opposed to a substantially larger U.S. role in the war, why did LBJ believe that he was simply following JFK's lead by escalating U.S. involvement? He believed it because Kennedy had significantly increased U.S. commitments during his presidency, and because three of Kennedy's principal foreign-policy advisers, Rusk, McNamara, and Bundy, departing from what Kennedy's final posture had been, told Johnson that expanded involvement would have been JFK's choice. More important, Johnson enlarged the U.S. role because he could not walk away from the conflict as Kennedy could have done, given enough time. By November of 1963 recent events had eclipsed memories of Kennedy's stumbling efforts at the Bay of Pigs and in Vienna. In fact, his record of success in the missile crisis and in the negotiation of a test-ban treaty with Moscow in the summer of 1963—a process he cut his military advisers out of—gave him considerable personal standing as a foreign-policy leader. Pulling back from Vietnam would not have undermined international or domestic confidence in Kennedy's direction of foreign affairs, especially given that poll data from as late as April of 1964 showed only 37 percent of the American public paying any attention to developments in Vietnam. Even in the spring and summer of 1965, after Johnson had begun a systematic bombing campaign and had dispatched 100,000 soldiers to the region, few Americans expected to see a victory in South Vietnam. In April of that year 45 percent of Americans polled predicted that a neutral or pro-communist government would take control of Saigon within the next five years; only 22 percent believed that Saigon would remain on Washington's side. By August most Americans assumed that the war would end with a compromise or, like the Korean War, with a negotiated settlement. In short, if a second-term Kennedy Administration had withdrawn U.S. fighting forces from Vietnam in 1965, few Americans would have felt that the United States had forfeited a chance at victory.
Johnson, in contrast, had few credentials as a world statesman and did not think he could deal effectively with communist adversaries abroad or conservative critics at home if he retreated from a Cold War challenge in Vietnam. When his need to demonstrate his foreign-policy toughness was coupled with his sincere belief in a war he saw as essential to containing communism, the result was a foreign-policy disaster.
 
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Your Majesty: JFK liked "brains and brawn", but especially Bobby had a fetish for SpecOps and "off-the-shelf" things like Mongoose. That's why they had Max Taylor as JCS Chairman- a multilingual, intellectual, experienced general.
 
Many years later, Theodore White regretted creating that myth. Arthur Schlesinger concurs, saying that JFK himself would've been furious. It was Jackie, with an assist from Bobby who created Camelot. RFK himself wasn't overly enthusiastic, mainly because the Lancelot role fit him a bit too well for comfort. Nor was the "aura" transferred to Bobby, because he was such a different personality: not eloquent, articulate or facile by any definition of those terms. Sincere, more idealistic, but mostly down-to-earth and hated pretense. That's how he connected to his constituents.
 
Your Majesty: JFK liked "brains and brawn", but especially Bobby had a fetish for SpecOps and "off-the-shelf" things like Mongoose. That's why they had Max Taylor as JCS Chairman- a multilingual, intellectual, experienced general.
Yes, but the problem was for every person with a brain, you had a Curtis LeMay who wanted to preemptively strike every nation with a funny accent, and a member of the Joint Chiefs singing the greatest hits of the John Birch Society.
 
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