Episode 26 Hour of Decision: JFK: Who was this man? Part Two: A precarious presidency

Jack Kennedy beat Richard Nixon in 1960, well, maybe. His health was holding, for now. His sex adventures would remain hidden, wouldn’t they? It was all a bit precarious.

In part two of Hour of Decision’s JFK series we discuss Kennedy’s time in the White House.

There was Jackie, the First Lady. She was beautiful. She was the personification of calm elegance, a miracle, considering the kind of life Jack was leading--- a life that she was well aware of.

There was the press, who loved what they saw. JFK’s small children. Bobby, Teddy, and those sisters, Peter Lawford, and yes, Frank Sinatra. The Kennedys were almost overloading the glamor meter. With JFK’s soaring rhetoric about living in a new time with endless possibilities, unattached to the limitations and base realities of politics….

-----------all this led to the fawning press describing the Kennedy White House as some kind of Fairy Tale, as Camelot, from the King Arthur stories. Unfortunately, this image was belied by the Kennedys’ political ruthlessness, and more so by JFKs unbelievable unfaithfulness, and the recklessness involved with it.

JFK surrounded himself with standard globalists and Fabian socialists. Both his foreign and domestic policy was well within the establishment paradigm. His domestic achievements from a Democrat viewpoint were limited. Khrushchev, the Soviet tyrant, overmatched him in negotiations. The Cuban Missile crisis was not a big win. Communists made gains in Cuba, Tibet, Laos, Congo, and of course, Vietnam.

Walter Reuther forced JFK’s hand and he finally introduced a comprehensive civil rights bill, which had an uncertain future at the time of the president’s death. Kennedy nervously contemplated his 1964 re-election campaign. He faced the prospect of losing “the solid south” of white voters, rising unemployment, and growing problems in Vietnam as he confronted an energized GOP base in the coming election.

Our final episode, JFK: Part Three will explore issues related to his enemies. Who were they? What motive and opportunity existed for each to kill an American president? Finally, we’ll talk about why JFK’s story is important today.