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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (19094)	2/17/2002 2:20:52 AM
From: maceng2	Respond to of 281500

to know he was good at foreign policy, and that Kennedy was a disaster at it. I agree with that POV. Nixon was keen as being a very good president. He even had everything taped so future leaders could learn how to do the job correctly. He did a great job of detente with China and Russia. I also read a book of his. He was most fearful of Russia at the time. He was probably right too. history.acusd.edu

To: LindyBill who wrote (19094)	2/17/2002 6:00:52 AM
From: SirRealist	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

While I can agree that Nixon had a capacity for some decent strategic foreign policy initiatives, he certainly had his share of blunders, with SE Asia chief among them. I also maintain that most of Kennedy's perceived flaws are for not following through on things he had made clear he wasn't going to do (Bay of Pigs) and for initially acceding to intelligence advisors (Diem coup) then recognizing that error, and rethinking the entire Vietnamese paradigm. It is unfortunate that much of the Kennedy legacy rests on highly visible acts with the history of his thoughts and plans confined to insiders whose partisan motives in cleaning up his image make their credence suspect. I suspect he was a Cold Warrior with a capacity to innovate constructively, who felt misled by certain quarters in the intelligence community, and, had he lived, would have provided much more to judge him by than the early gaffes. His handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis certainly made Kruschev realize he'd previously underestimated Kennedy. I think too many have since. Of course, I'm also one of those nutty conspiracy believers who thinks the course he was just starting to embark upon may have been what caused his murder. We'll never know now, will we? Back to Nixon: I'm not sure, in 1960, he would have been as successful at foreign policy as he was some 12 years later. Not only was there the major domestic events of the Civil Rights movement underway earlier, but there was a more inexperienced, gungho, McCarthyistic simplicity to his work. So much so that Ike retained a strong dislike of him. Bottom line: it's all moot conjecture.