Nixon versus Kennedy: Redux

[PanzerJaeger]

Looking back, I wonder if the glorification of John Kennedy and the vilification of Richard Nixon reflect a desire by those in the media to adhere to a particular narrative rather than to reality.

When comparing their accomplishments in office off the top of my head I get:

Kennedy:
- Bay of Pigs fiasco
-Cuban Missile Crisis (many claim a result of the Bay of Pigs)
-poorly engineered social reforms (affirmative action, etc)
-getting the US into Vietnam

Nixon:
-Opened China
-engineered an honorable end to Vietnam
-successful domestic agenda

Of course, both men lacked a large amount of personal integrity. Kennedy was a far greater philanderer than even Clinton and had no issues stuffing ballot boxes and stealing elections, and everyone knows of Nixon's paranoia. However, if you look at Watergate and the coverup, it really is not much different than the norm for politics of that era.

So has Kennedy's persona and untimely death helped his legacy, while Nixon's personality, and the hostile nature of the press towards his administration, hurt him?

[Beirut]

So has Kennedy's persona and untimely death helped his legacy,

Yes. But he was still a great man.

...while Nixon's personality, and the hostile nature of the press towards his administration, hurt him?

Yes, but he was still a great man.

[LittleGrizzly]

People who die always get a kind of hero worship, especially those who get taken out in thier prime..

[Adrian II]

Narrative is the only way we have to make sense of reality, old chum. That's why we all have a 'particular' narrative. No one has a watertight claim to reality.

But all 'particular' narratives change. I think the Kennedy years have been put in perspective by now and the initial glorification, which was in part a reaction to his murder, is all but forgotten. People remember the promise he seemed to embody more than his limited achievements.

I believe Nixon's main mistake (which caused his downfall) was his inability to prevent leaks from the White House. His main crime was that instead of following the law in dealing with these leaks, he set up his own little department of dirty tricks. He acted as if he were above the law, and even said so on several occasions. Americans don't like that. It reminds them of fascism.

[Beirut]

But all 'particular' narratives change. I think the Kennedy years have been put in perspective by now and the initial glorification, which was in part a reaction to his murder, is all but forgotten. People remember the promise he seemed to embody more than his limited achievements.

There was a great line from Oliver Stone's movie "Nixon", where Nixon is looking at Kennedy's portrait in the White House and says, "When they looked at him they saw the stars. When they look at me they see themselves."

[Adrian II]

Panzer's mention of 'engineering an honourable end to Vietnam' is certainly relevant today.

All three candidates pretend to want the same for Iraq. McCain is the least committed to concrete steps and maybe, therefore, the most realistic of the three. I mean, if you give away your plan, it may become a self-denying exercise.

Nixon's plan behind his vague 1968 promise of 'Peace with Honor' was never explained. In his memoirs, Nixon revealed that there was no plan whatsoever. But he had a popular mandate to end the war (not win it) and at the same time he had his hands free to tackle the issue step by step. And that, he maintained, proved to be a decisive advantage.


Nixon greets POW McCain, 1973

[PanzerJaeger]

Narrative is the only way we have to make sense of reality, old chum. That's why we all have a 'particular' narrative. No one has a watertight claim to reality.

It seems as though sometimes the narrative dominates reality until it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Hillary Clinton is the latest victim.

[BigTex]

-Opened China

That was a good thing???

They were both horrible presidents. The only reason people see Kennedy as good or just is because he was young and assassinated early.

[Lord Winter]

That was a good thing???

So should we have just ignored any comminust country and hope they went away before the clock hit midnight? Dettene wasn't a terrible idea it eased tensions. Its not like there would have been any benifits if we had countinued with our current path.

[seireikhaan]

Generally, most people educated on the matter would say that, with the exception of Watergate(which, of course, is a HUGE exception), Nixon would be regarded as one of the better Presidents in the lineage of the U.S., due to the things you mentioned. Kennedy had great fanfare because he was younger, suaver, and represented a new kind of politician as opposed to the 'old fogey' kind of politicians preceding him(FDR, Truman, Eisenhower), and what with that era being what it was, it naturally suited to him. Those that still idolize him nowadays tend to do so with a sense of great regret that he didn't get a chance to do more, as opposed to those things that he actually did do. Although my bet is that the U.S. would've gotten tangled up in 'Nam no matter who was President, due to the policy of 'containment' that had been produced under the Truman regime. We'd already seen foreign commitments to try to stop the spread of Communism in Korea, and it was to be expected that, with a Communist North Vietnam at war with a capitalist South Vietnam, that conflict was ready made for the situation.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

That was a good thing???

I like cheap things.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Tex:

"Opening" China was a HUGE step in the Cold War. It completed the political "de-coupling" of the two great communist powers and, over time, undercut much of the Soviet influence in Vietnam. China had an interest in bringing all of SE Asia into its sphere of influence and the Soviets were able to do little to prevent it. We ended up with "Detente," with the Helsinkin accords etc. -- all of which played a role in the eventual demise of the USSR.

Panzer:

To be fair to Kennedy, though he did involve the USA in Vietnam, there is little evidence that he intended to ramp up the conflict in Vietnam the way it was ramped up under Johnson & MacNamara. At the time of his death, Kennedy was using CIA, the Berets and locals and attempting a repeat of what had occurred, successfully, in Greece. Kennedy did screw up what little chance the Bay of Pigs effort might have had and did, by coming off as a 'lightweight" in Kruschev's eyes, set the stage for the Soviet deployment of missiles to Cuba -- though Kennedy had a good learning curve ability and handled that crisis much better once it had arrived.

In fact, he was just hitting his stride as a leader when Oswald whacked him. Hard to say where he'd have finished up. I don't think Kennedy would have attempted Johnson's "Great Society" and I don't think Vietnam would have been the grand conflict it became. We'll never know.

[Adrian II]

[SIZE="6"]"Opening" China was a HUGE step in the Cold War. It completed the political "de-coupling" of the two great communist powers and, over time, undercut much of the Soviet influence in Vietnam.

I believe that when one day the Chinese archives on this episode will be opened, we in the West will finally recognise that it was Zhou Enlai who "opened" the West for China, not the other way round.

You have to take the chronology into consideration.

By 1972 the Chinese had absorbed the lessons of their infamous 1969 border war with the Soviet Union, which sealed the ideological rift between them. At the time it was feared that the Soviets would carry out a nuclear strike on China's fledgling nuclear armaments facilities. The relationship between the two couldn't have been worse.

Secondly, the Chinese appear to have been extremely worried that further Soviet-American detente would one day seal their strategic fate. Detente had taken off under Nixon in 1969 as well, when the Warsaw Pact for the first time proposed a summit on security and cooperation in Europe, which resulted in SALT I (1972) and subsequently the ABMT.

In response to that situation, the Chinese sought a rapprochement to the U.S. and Europe, in order to defuse "Taiwan" on the one hand and thwart Western detente with the SU on the other hand. In Europe the Chinese cultivated the West-German Christian Democrats in particular, notably the militant Bavarian prime minister Franz Joseph Strauss who was received in Beijing in 1975, well before the Bundeskanzler, Helmut Schmidt. Strauss was the highest placed exponent of German revanchism. Moscow was not amused.

P.S. It's funny to see what the Soviet take on "Watergate" was, and why they thought Nixon was the one being framed in that affair.

[Geoffrey S]

It's also interesting to see how the Russians completely misunderstood the relevance of Watergate whilst dealing with the USA, and in the end mainly with Kissinger, during the Yom Kippur war.

[Spino]

Let's not forget Kennedy's contribution to the Space Program and our mission to put a man on the moon. If nothing else I respect and admire the man for keeping us competitive in the space race.

A lesser known fact about Nixon is that he also has the unenviable position of being the first Republican to dramatically contribute to the increase in the size of the Federal Government and Federal spending on social programs (someone correct me on this). I know Pat Buchanan has raked Tricky Dick over the coals for that on more than one occasion.

Panzer, I feel you're also overlooking the simple fact that Kennedy was considered an attractive man and Nixon a rather unattractive man. Sure, these are factors that people scorn when attempting to intelligently discuss heady matters but our primal, evolutionary cultivated instincts are hard to overlook. The fact of the matter is it has been proven that attractive people are more likely to be looked up to, deferred to, promoted, lauded and, in the event of a missteps or wrong doing, excused for 'bad' behavior.

Honestly now, if the lives and positions of both Presidents were reversed would people still be mourning over the loss of Nixon? Would Tricky Dick and his administration be likened to King Arthur presiding over an American Camelot? No way Jose.

[BigTex]

Tex:

"Opening" China was a HUGE step in the Cold War. It completed the political "de-coupling" of the two great communist powers and, over time, undercut much of the Soviet influence in Vietnam. China had an interest in bringing all of SE Asia into its sphere of influence and the Soviets were able to do little to prevent it. We ended up with "Detente," with the Helsinkin accords etc. -- all of which played a role in the eventual demise of the USSR.

Panzer:

To be fair to Kennedy, though he did involve the USA in Vietnam, there is little evidence that he intended to ramp up the conflict in Vietnam the way it was ramped up under Johnson & MacNamara. At the time of his death, Kennedy was using CIA, the Berets and locals and attempting a repeat of what had occurred, successfully, in Greece. Kennedy did screw up what little chance the Bay of Pigs effort might have had and did, by coming off as a 'lightweight" in Kruschev's eyes, set the stage for the Soviet deployment of missiles to Cuba -- though Kennedy had a good learning curve ability and handled that crisis much better once it had arrived.

In fact, he was just hitting his stride as a leader when Oswald whacked him. Hard to say where he'd have finished up. I don't think Kennedy would have attempted Johnson's "Great Society" and I don't think Vietnam would have been the grand conflict it became. We'll never know.

Those are all the short term results of him opening china. Yes it hastened the fall of the soviet union and made vietnam a little nicer. But Nixon woke the giant and showed it the world. The full repricussions of those actions have yet to be seen. The judges are still out on this, in a few decades though where going to find them out though.

I like cheap things.

Yeah gas, energy and basically everything is cheap right now. God bless china and the massive surge in the demand for world resources.