The JFK Experience

[H2O Man]

"I know a banker who served thirty years as president of a bank. He had more experience, until his bank went broke, than any other banker in Massachusetts. But if I ever go in the banking business, I do not plan to hire him, and he knows the operation from top to bottom"

-- John Kennedy; Jacksonville, Florida; October, 1960

[Nickster]

1. That crazy JFK. :-)

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. Ok, I was on the fence, but this sold me on Obama!

:puke:

[H2O Man]

5. Your thoughts

mean so much.

[The_Casual_Observer]

6. At least as much as yours do!

Your Majesty!

[H2O Man]

7. No, I'm serious.

You are it, man. It's all about you.

[The_Casual_Observer]

10. And I've got hope too.

[H2O Man]

13. Please share.

[The_Casual_Observer]

14. I can't exactly describe it, but I know it's there. You've got it too.

[H2O Man]

15. More, please.

You are on a roll. After you used that little smiley face puking, there is no doubt: you are the champ! Please! I beg of you.

[Hutzpa]

3. I know, George Bush

was the manager of Texas Rangers and he left them bankrupt, just as he has now with America.

[CTyankee]

4. JFK used extraordinary wisdom to save us from nuclear destruction during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

He and Bobby fashioned just the right mix of diplomacy and miltary strength to resolve the conflict, altho a fluke of correspondence might have provided the needed "finish." I for one have been forever grateful to him for that; I was a young mother with a baby son living in NYC at the time and I was scared to death.

Everyone should go back and read what happened in that crisis. For all of his lack of experience, for all of the complaining by liberals back then (Eleanor Roosevelt, a Stevenson backer, said he had "more profile than courage" leading up to the 1960 Democratic convention ), he saved our collective butts. And he did it early in his presidency. Of course, he knew a lot about the world and about diplomacy, his father having been the ambassador to Great Britain in the 30s.

I'm not an Obama supporter, I support John Edwards. But I know that experience alone is not enough.

[TahitiNut]

9. JFK agreed to not put nukes in Turkey.

:shrug:

[CTyankee]

17. Well, according to Elie Abel's book, "The Missile Crisis" written a few years

after the crisis, the missiles were already in Turkey when JFK took office. However, they were obsolete and in danger of sabotage. JFK had quietly ordered them to dismantled and taken away before the crisis. Once the crisis began, he wasn't in a good position to just take them away, altho Adlai Stevenson argued that he should. JFK felt that wasn't a good move at the time; it would look like the U.S. was giving in. However, JFK did see that removal of the missiles in Turkey should be on a list of items negotiated in upcoming disarmament talks (centering on NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations).

[AlertLurker]

16. Revisionism, anyone?

The USSR wanted the USA's BMs out of Turkey, so they staged their own delivery of Russian BMs to Cuba. JFK tucked tail and comprimised (thank God!) to appease Kruschev and prevent further agression, PERIOD.

It's pretty difficult to argue that the USSR did not have the right, when the USA already had done it...

You are right - everyone should go back and read what happened back then. Forget about most USAmerican history books, though...

[CTyankee]

19. Just a bit more complicated than that. You should read Elie Abel's book.

See my post about the missiles in Turkey. They were NOT given away during the missile crisis. Plus, they were already obsolete and JFK had wanted to get rid of them before the crisis. Had ordered them to be dismantled but it had not been carried out.

I certainly agree that the missiles in Cuba were an "in your face" to our missiles in Europe and they were on the list of negotiable items for the upcoming disarmament talks. They were not, however, removed as a quid pro quo.

I think what JFK did was right. His use of a naval blockade was a balanced military action (he even called it a "quarantine" since the term blockade is an act of war). Remember, he got every country in the OAS to sign on by shrewdly making the case that this was a "hemispheric" not just a U.S. crisis. His handling of the heads of western European countris was superb. And we were ably represented before the world in the United Naions by Adlai Stevenson and our stunning use of U2 technology (which the USSR didn't know we possessed).

Abel's book was published in 1966, only 4 years after the crisis itself. He was a deeply respected journalist and later an academic. Far from being "revisionist", his book to this day is considered the gold standard of accounts about the missile crisis.

[H2O Man]

21. You are correct.

Thanks!

[AlertLurker]

24. Abel's book is widely respected amongst Americans...

and I know that I oversimplified, BUT:

We're never going to know what was "on the table" during the Crisis or the talks and that's simply a fact. JFK was saving face, period, according to many others at the time (Canadian, Eurocentric or Eastern Bloc, mostly). You would never read this in an ASAsian book, however. There are a great many other perspectives that are just as well respected. Take a look at the USSR's (widely ignored by US media and US historians) propositions on Oct 27 and 28th for example. Transcripts of phone conversations between Stevenson and Kusnetsov (sp?) and audio clips are also most telling. The USA was pretty well willing to do almost ANYTHING to get the IL28s out of there...

I also find it difficult to believe that the Jupiters deployed by USA in Turkey in 1961 were suddenly "obsolete" merely one year later or that JFK had ordered them dismantled but it hadn't been carried out. Has this EVER happened? No. Never.

The fact that the Jupiters' removal was part of a later, larger, strategic policy treaty allowed BOTH nations to save face...especially JFK and USA...but then again, we're just never going to know what was "on the table" during the Crisis or the talks because it will never be properly declassified.

[CTyankee]

26. Well, I have no way of knowing for sure about JFK's order to dismantle the Jupiter missiles.

It was stated as fact in Abel's book, however, there is a new book on the missile crisis due to come out but I can't remember the title. Perhaps it will have more information that has been declassified.

What I find interesting about the account that JFK ordered the missiles to be dismantled is that it wasn't done. The tiny bit of tinfoil on my head wants me to believe that it was an order never carried out because of a defiant group of cold warriors deep within the military power structure, a prelude perhaps to the assassination in 1963...

Abel seemed to take this information at face value. I got no hint from his account that this idea was crazy. Interesting and probably worth a little search on the Internets...

[Octafish]

27. George Washington University's National Security Archive is a top resource...

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/index.htm

[CTyankee]

28. Excellent! Just read it. It is an important addition to Abel's book. n/t.

[TahitiNut]

8. Yep. And those tellers in his banks had 35 years of experience making change.

:silly:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

11. Wait, didn't the Clintons go broke?

I thought I remember something about them running to Hollywood to raise money after they couldn't pay off all of their legal debts.

I may be misremembering.

[EFerrari]

12. I remember (how I don't know) that people were joking JFK would show up

to the White House in short pants, i.e., because of his youth.

That didn't seem to be a problem, iirc. :)

[avaistheone1]

18. I don’t think the JFK experience can be compared to Obama.

Obama is a very good speaker, but his oratory skills are no match to either JFK's or Martin Luther King's for that matter.

In terms of experience JFK was a war hero, and served 6 years in Congress before become president. He also grew up in a political family surrounded by politics. JFK was hardily inexperienced. The comparison to Obama is untrue and just does not work.

[H2O Man]

22. There are differences.

And there are similarities.

The OP, of course, can be used in support of any ne of the top three democrats. When the general election comes around, the republican machine will say that Obama/Clinton/Edwards does not have enough experience.

[Carolina]

20. not to mention

look at the vaunted experience of those in the current misadministration. Many had years of experience in both the legislative and executive branches of gov't having cut their political teeth with Tricky Dick.

All that experience sure turned out well for us. Nuf said.

[avaistheone1]

25. Actually the problem is that so many of the Bush appointees are INexperienced. Take a look here:

Jay Hallen, Iraqi Stock Exchange / Coalition Provisional Authority. Jay Hallen, aged 24, was tapped by Jim O'Beirne to reopen the Iraqi stock exchange, despite having no background in finance.

James Haveman, Iraqi Health Care System / Coalition Provisional Authority. James Haveman, a 60-year-old social worker, was tapped to restructure Iraq's health care system despite the fact that he was largely unknown among international health experts.

Michael Brown, Director of FEMA. Before taking over the reins of the Federal Emergency Management Agency Michael Brown only held one position in emergency management. The position was for the city Edmond, OK where he interned in college. Brown also previously held the position of commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. Michael Brown drew immense criticism for his handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Julie Myers, Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "Julie Myers is an attorney, former prosecutor and former White House personnel officer who seems to be a rising star in the administration, she is also married to the chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, but she has little expertise in immigration and no management background to suggest she can take over an agency with 15,000 employees and a $4 billion budget."

Tracy Henke, Executive Director of the Department of Homeland Security Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness. "Tracy Henke, an Ashcroft apparatchik from the Justice Department who was best known for trying to politicize the findings of its Bureau of Justice Statistics. So much so that the White House installed her in Homeland Security with a recess appointment, to shield her from protracted Senate scrutiny. Under Henke math, it follows that St. Louis, in her home state and Mr. Ashcroft's, has seen its counterterrorism allotment rise by more than 30 percent while that for the cities actually attacked on 9/11 fell."

Food and Drug Administration
Scott Gottlieb, Food and Drug Administration Deputy Commissioner for Medical and Scientific Affairs. Thirty-three year old former American Enterprise Institute fellow and Wall Street tipster Gottlieb "was named deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs, one of three deputies in the agency's second-ranked post at FDA." Gottlieb drew criticism when he questioned the stoppage of medical trials of a "drug for multiple sclerosis during which three people had developed an unusual disorder in which their bodies eliminated their blood platelets and one died of intracerebral bleeding as a result...Gottlieb speculated that the complication might have been the result of the disease and not the drug. 'Just seems like an overreaction to place a clinical hold' on the trial."
Department of State

Ellen Sauerbrey, Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Immigration. According to a Cox News Service Column "Ellen Sauerbrey, an anti-abortion activist, has become assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and immigration, a position ordinarily filled by experienced professionals. Sauerbrey's scant qualifications include being booed by the other delegates to a United Nations conference on women for insisting worldwide abstinence is the way to reduce HIV." The Star Tribune wrote that "Sauerbrey, the Maryland chairman of Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, has no experience in dealing with refugees and has been antagonistic to mainstream population efforts."
OMB and GSA

Clay Johnson, OMB Deputy Director. Bureau of the Budget deputy director Clay Johnson, "a Texas friend of the president's since their days at Yale and Mr. Bush's first White House personnel director." Johnson also handled appointments for Mr. Bush when he was governor.

David Safavian, Chief Procurement Officer General Services Administration. Former Lobbying Partner of Grover Norquist "David Safavian didn't have much hands-on experience in government contracting when the Bush Administration tapped him in 2003 to be its chief procurement officer. A law-school internship helping the Pentagon buy helicopters was about the extent of it. Yet as administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, Safavian, 38, was placed in charge of the $ 300 billion the government spends each year on everything from paper clips to nuclear submarines, as well as the $ 62 billion already earmarked for Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts. It was his job to ensure that the government got the most for its money and that competition for federal contracts--among companies as well as between government workers and private contractors--was fair. It was his job until he resigned on Sept. 16 and was subsequently arrested and charged with lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with the Federal Government."

http://www.democrats.org/a/2006/09/unqualified_but.php


You can happy talk all day long. The bottom line is experience matters a great deal.

[Me.]

23. Thin Ice Today

Now that things are heating up. Our temps are unseasonably warm for Jan.

As your point...apt and well taken.