The Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy 11/22/1962

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usertron2020

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Bob VS Ted

RogueBeaver said:
RFK did not have the clubbable personality to make friends in the cloakroom, and Ted did. He was more Thatcher than John Diefenbaker: a disciplined, talented executive who commanded authority, while not being a great parliamentarian by any standard. When it came down to the "nut-cutting", that is where things got interesting.
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Very true, and too many glassy-eyed old liberals forget this. RFK WANTED the job, but Teddy actually had more of the skills. Interestingly, nobody's mentioned that Chappaquidik will certainly be butterflied. The real story was a tragedy of errors, a coverup of a coverup, not a "murder".

Whaddaya say, RogueBeaver? Would RFK's ambition outshine Teddy's ability?
 
RogueBeaver

RogueBeaver

LBJ thought Ted would make a great Majority Leader, because he thought that Ted was an excellent Senator. Since Bobby was seven years older, that means he gets first dibs. Not to mention that RFK got "Jack's seat" on their private aircraft. Ted's problem is that he's not a policy wonk like Bobby. When asked to put more "bite" into a speech, he'd say: "I'm not Bobby". More importantly: Ted is too liberal for the party. Bobby won Indiana because he won a supermajority of the blue-collars, many of whom supported George Wallace in November. That was in large part because they saw him as a "tough guy who would stick it to the establishment", or to use Nixonland lingo, a "Orthogonian of Franklin background." Ditto for the Hispanics who provided the California margins. Both these groups share a strong cultural conservatism. "They see Gene McCarthy as Lace Curtain Irish, and I look Shanty Irish to these people." No one in their right mind would call Ted a cultural conservative. I won't get into the economics, but refer you to Bill Clinton instead.

Yes, like his successor Hillary Clinton, and his GOP opponent Dick Nixon, Bobby did not bother to disguise his ambition. Like his fellow "blue-eyed sheikh", Hillary Clinton, that scared the hell out of the Democratic establishment. "Ruthless" could be translated by his enemies as "rabidly ambitious punk", as it was in 1964. Which baffles me, seeing as LBJ and Nixon could also be so accused, but I think like Hillary this was irrational hatred by both the Democratic left and the "vast right-wing conspiracy".

Oh, and the liberals hated Bobby for many reasons. One is probably his very devout Catholicism, another is being on the Democratic centre/centre-right on economic issues. (Scheer claimed that he wasn't that different from Reagan economically) Thirdly, he wasn't a type to debate things at ADA seminars, rather actually take action against what he saw as America's problems. He thought that they looked down their nose at the poor they claimed to care about, and that they were "soft".

Re "Bob vs. Ted": Ted gets pummelled. Don't let the fact that Bobby's only 5"9, and Ted being 6"2, fool you into believing otherwise. ;)
 
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Drew

Rouge Beaver said:
Yes, like his successor Hillary Clinton, and his GOP opponent Dick Nixon, Bobby did not bother to disguise his ambition. Like his fellow "blue-eyed sheikh", Hillary Clinton, that scared the hell out of the Democratic establishment. "Ruthless" could be translated by his enemies as "rabidly ambitious punk", as it was in 1964. Which baffles me, seeing as LBJ and Nixon could also be so accused, but I think like Hillary this was irrational hatred by both the Democratic left and the "vast right-wing conspiracy". Oh, and the liberals hated Bobby for many reasons. One is probably his very devout Catholicism, another is being on the Democratic centre/centre-right on economic issues. (Scheer claimed that he wasn't that different from Reagan economically) Thirdly, he wasn't a type to debate things at ADA seminars, rather actually take action against what he saw as America's problems. He thought that they looked down their nose at the poor they claimed to care about, and that they were "soft". Re "Bob vs. Ted": Ted gets pummelled. Don't let the fact that Bobby's only 5"9, and Ted being 6"2, fool you into believing otherwise
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Bob was the most like their father in disposition and tactics. Ted went too much with the rhetoric, and that pulled him to the left. Ted just didn't have the killer instinct the way RFK did.
 
RogueBeaver

RogueBeaver

"Bobby's the most like me: he hates like me." I completely agree with the latter part of Joe Sr's assertion. Yes, Bobby was quite proficient in SpecOps, a rival to Tricky Dick. But you're right: Bobby was the most discliplined of the three, the Puritan, but in private friendly, witty and compassionate. Very few people saw that, at least until certain parts of the '68 campaign. Take this exchange from the California debate:

KENNEDY: (lays out urban development program)
MCCARTHY: That would lead to a practical apartheid in this country, and I propose resettling some blacks in other neighbourhoods.
KENNEDY: "I say, when you say you will take 10,000 blacks and move them into Orange County..."

So he just subtly implied that Gene McCarthy was aping Hendrik Verwoerd on national TV. There and then, Bobby proved that he could handle Nixon in a debate.
 
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RogueBeaver

RogueBeaver

Forgiven. ;) Were it not for Hans Kraus replacing Janet Travell and putting JFK on a strict exercise regimen, he'd have likely ended up in a wheelchair by 1966 or 1967.
 
RogueBeaver

RogueBeaver

If JFK remarried, it would be after he left office. I'm not sure if this would reduce his penchant for womanizing. No one can do that but JFK himself.
 
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