So wrote the historian Garry Wills, in his 1982 book "The Kennedy Imprisonment," quoted at The Nation by Jeet Heer in "Donald Trump Is Stealing the Kennedy Brand."
Heer says Wills "rightly emphasizes that JFK’s brand of politics was deeply personal, based not on ideology but on charisma, with policies executed by a band of loyalists (including family members).... [T]he commonality with Trump is inescapable."
I see I already have a "Trump is like JFK" tag. I'm curious to publish this post and click on it.
But first, let me quote a bit more of Heer's analysis: "One reason Trump is able to make a play to take over the Kennedy brand is that the family itself, after the death of Edward Kennedy in 2009, became much less prominent as icons of American political liberalism.... The Kennedy name now belongs more to mythology than to electoral politics, which has made possible both the adventurism of RFK Jr. and the cynical appropriation of the brand by Trump...."
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17 comments:
I have long thought that Trump was most akin to JFK as a president, but there is nothing cynical about what Trump is doing. He does see how much trouble the country is in, and is launching a full court play to try to forestall the worst.
We are far, far closer to being Argentina than the WSJ believes.
More proof that TDS is dead. Only the true loons deny it. The Hitler comparisons have shifted to Kennedy comparisons.
Sure, but all that innovation didn’t end well for JFK.
"Sure, but all that innovation didn’t end well for JFK."
When they get Trump, there will be a second gunman. And a third.
"[A]dventurism of RFK, Jr." Heaven forfend! Not that. The progressive Left has completed its evolution into... Victorian old maids.
Trump has always been charismatic. He can't help it. He's got charisma. It's a gift, that's what the word means. You can't buy it or develop it. Charisma 101 would be a course offered by the most fraudulent of fraudulent diploma mills. The gods bestow it upon whomsoever they choose. Toss the Dale Carnegie book; it's useless. The Jeet Heers of 2016-2024 all agreed that Trump is exceptionally charismatic, They only difference between now and then is the poor bastard he stole it from, namely Adolf Hitler. The intent then was to assassinate Donald Trump. The same intent persists. In the universe of madness there is an army of washed-up communistic ne'er-do-wells who will take Heer's invented Kennedy connection as an invitation to repeat history.
Trump isn't appropriating the JFK brand. That's nonsense. Jack Kennedy didn't have a "brand" to be stolen, sold, or conveyed by deed. No one does. Jeet Heer is a very silly person if he thinks they do. (He doesn't, but the target readership of The Atlantic are sufficiently dense.)
The first “Trump is like JFK” post feels a lot like what is happening now. Here is the headline:
"Have we ever had a president before this one who so disdains the advice and policies of those who have spent their lives working for the government he leads?"
From the sublime to the ridiculous. For some reason, the meme I can't shake today is the memory of Kelly Bundy's phonetic pronunciation of "JFK" which she assumed was that President's actual name.
Remember when Democrats used to say that Biden had to use Executive Orders because “Congress is broken”?
Now they lament that Congress is supine and should do something (hold hearings?) to stand up to Trump’s Executive Orders.
[T]he commonality with Trump is inescapable
It's always BS when it comes to Trump, isn't it? Trump is the anti-JFK. People were once inspired by the following. Now they piss all over it.
We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
This much we pledge--and more.
To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do--for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder....
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility--I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it--and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
The Camelot appeal of the Kennedys curdled with 1980. I read the Kennedy imprisonment when it came out in 1982 and it was nails in the coffin for me.
I only read The Nation when I need to find some update on Alger Hiss.
Kennedy probably concluded nothing. He was a drug-addled womanizing fool.
VA Lawyer Mark; "It's always BS when it comes to Trump, isn't it? Trump is the anti-JFK. People were once inspired by the following. Now they piss all over it."
Does it cause physical pain when you post such BS?
MOfarmer: "I only read The Nation when I need to find some update on Alger Hiss."
Thread winner.
JFK established USAID.
I checked out the index of Wills' book the other day. He had a lot to say about Emerson in his Nixon book. Nothing about RWE in the Kennedy book.
Presidents learn from their predecessors. Obama picked up on Kennedy's methods with his many "czars." Reagan taught presidential administrations that if they didn't make the news for the media the media would make the story whatever the media wanted to be the story. Since the Roosevelts, presidents have used executive orders to get around Congress and get things done. Trump has learned from past experience, and from his own missteps in his first term.
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