Eisenhower put in train both the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, and the deployment of the Jupiter missiles to Turkey. Kennedy's mistake was in allowing both to continue, and he certainly deserves criticism for poor planning re the Bay of Pigs. Either it should have been an all out invasion of Cuba by the US, or they should have canceled it. The administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower had regarded Castro with caution from the beginning, as his increasingly leftist rhetoric suggested a potential close relationship with the Soviet Union. By the time Eisenhower left office, in January 1961, the Cuban government was routinely and openly hostile to the United States. Eisenhower responded publicly by asking Congress to clamp down on Cuban sugar imports; privately he began working with Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles and Vice President Richard Nixon to create a plan to overthrow Castro. The plan went through a variety of forms; one version called for as many as 12,000 exile soldiers to invade, heavily supported by the U.S. air force. During the 1960 presidential campaign, unaware of the plot that was forming, then-Senator Kennedy harshly criticized Eisenhower and Nixon for “losing Cuba.” When Kennedy became President, Dulles stayed on as CIA director and shared with him the invasion plan, as it existed at the time. Kennedy was immediately uncomfortable with it. Though he was no friend or sympathizer of Castro’s, the young Commander in Chief was wary of committing the United States to military action in the Caribbean. He was worried by Castro’s antagonism, but he also had to deal with emerging conflicts elsewhere in the Third World, in Laos and in Vietnam. Dulles pushed him hard, though, promising that the plan would successfully mobilize the Cuban people to remove Castro. Also, Kennedy feared that if he canceled the plan, CIA insiders might leak knowledge of it, calling into question his anti-Communist credentials. He and his secretary of state, Dean Rusk, told the CIA to reduce the scale of the invasion and make sure that no American military or intelligence personnel were involved. Dulles agreed to do so. In the early spring Kennedy ordered the attack to go forward. http://www.americanheritage.com/eve...-mccone-khrushchev-cuban-missile-crisis.shtml Ironically, Kennedy was seriously considering withdrawing the Jupiters from Turkey a year earlier, already seen as obsolete, but was concerned about offending Turkey. The U.S. had begun to deploy fifteen Jupiter IRBM (intermediate-range ballistic missiles) nuclear missiles near Izmir, Turkey, which directly threatened cities in the western sections of the Soviet Union. The Jupiter missiles were regarded by President Kennedy as being of questionable strategic value, as the nuclear submarine was capable of providing the same cover with superior firepower. On taking office in 1961, Kennedy ordered that the Jupiter missiles be removed. http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis Keep D&D Civil.
A lot of good posts. I was only four, but I'm one of those old enough to have seen JFK in Houston the day before he was shot. He went by the old NASA building and we were there to wave as his motorcade passed. It is one of my earliest "visual' memories. I was too young to understand the importance of the assassination but vividly remember watching the news, the funeral, and seeing Oswald shot on live TV. More than a "great" politician or leader, JFK was a symbol of a new age dawning in America. He was the vanguard of "the sixties," young, charismatic, Camelot, etc. His legacy and romanticized view as a "great" leader has been magnified because of the assassination. As someone pointed out early on, over the course of a full term he may have lived up to the expectations or not. We'll never know.
JFK like Reagan was very charismatic and very well liked by most people. That does not make JFK (or Reagan) "great".
Very nice post. You really had to be there to understand just how revolutionary the Kennedy Presidency was. It had a huge cultural impact in the US, in matters great and small. After Kennedy chose to have his inauguration without a hat, it was the end of wearing fedoras as a style for men (remember Bogart in the movies? that's how men dressed. my Dad wore a fedora while I was growing up... not after Kennedy's inauguration, and it had been the style for decades), and of wearing top hats at inaugurals and formal occasions. That might seem trivial, today, but it was a big deal at the time. Just one example. The entire nation was energized after the conformity and conservative era of the '50's. Rashmon, I saw Oswald get shot on TV, as well. I was over at my cousin's house, with my Mom and my aunt, and my cousin and I immediately stood up and cheered. It was later that we realized what a disaster it had been. Strange how many historical events I've inadvertably seen, or been around. Keep D&D Civil.
I think a better question, but less difficult to answer, is, what was so average about Dan Quayle? The only thing I can think of is his Murphy Brown comment about unwed mothers, but that seemed to underscore an aloofness with the American people that didn't compliment Bush Sr. very well.
