I have an aunt in Ireland who always asks me about JFK (who was before my time.)
I told her he was a tax-cutter and an anti-Communist so I assume by today’s standards, JFK would be a Republican. How much of a Republican I couldn’t say; I don’t pay that much attention to politics.
What say you, dopers?
Another question occurs to me: what member(s) of Congress today would be JFK’s political twin (i.e., who holds the same opinions and positions today as he did back in the 1960s?)
Everybody was an anti-communist then, so that wouldn’t automatically translate to being a Republican today. He wasn’t a big tax cutter but he attempted a balanced budget. The country’s debt was so much lower then and top tax rates so much higher there’s no real way to fit his economic policy into the present. He was a social liberal, he’d fit right in with the DNC mainstream right now.
“Tax-cutter” is relative – JFK lowered taxes from very, very high rates comparatively. That doesn’t mean he’d lower taxes from present rates. And everyone today is “anti-Communist”. He’d fit very well into the Democratic party.
Never forget that JFK ran as a hawk - it’s not too strong to say an “ultra hawk” against the not exactly dovish Nixon, and won in part because of that stance.
Name the last Dem who won anything promoting military aggression and force.
Considering a majority of Democratic Senators voted for Iraq…
It must be remembered that most of JFK’s New Frontier was essentially expanding social insurance/welfare programs and generally improving with the lot of the workingman in line with Democratic policies before and since.
You also have to ask whether you’re just plucking JFK out of the '60s with a time machine and dumping him in 2015, or if you’re assuming that he experienced the intervening decades. Just as one example, nearly everyone in 1963, liberal and conservative alike, would have considered the notion of gay marriage absurd, but nowadays a strong majority, spanning nearly all demographics, supports it. If it had even occurred to anyone to ask when he was alive, Kennedy probably would have been against it, but with time, he probably would have changed his mind.
He would be a centrist Democrat. He did cut taxes, but didn’t want huge deficits. He favored a strong U.S. military and an internationalist presence in the world, including working closely with the UN. He favored strengthening the domestic social safety net. He supported a strong separation of church and state. He was generally in favor of individual liberty and civil rights. Although not as quick to support the Civil Rights Movement as his supporters would have liked, he threw his full weight behind it in his final year in office.
Meant to add: He backed immigration reform and robust unions, and stood up to big business when necessary (as in the Big Steel crisis). He took important first steps to support women’s rights and better care for the mentally ill.
They were all hawks then. He was more hawkish than the rest because that was his personality, he tended toward the extremes. He wouldn’t run on a war platform now, nobody except John McCain would do that these days. But just like all the other Democrats who ran for or became president since his time he’d talk peace and conduct war in office if he was running now.
First Inaugural Address, Barack Obama, Jan. 20, 2009:
*…Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends – honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism – these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.
What is demanded, then, is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept, but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.
This is the price and the promise of citizenship. This is the source of our confidence – the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny. This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall; and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served in a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath…*
Second Inaugural Address, Barack Obama, Jan. 21, 2013:
*…My fellow Americans, the oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction. And we must faithfully execute that pledge during the duration of our service. But the words I spoke today are not so different from the oath that is taken each time a soldier signs up for duty or an immigrant realizes her dream. My oath is not so different from the pledge we all make to the flag that waves above and that fills our hearts with pride.
They are the words of citizens and they represent our greatest hope. You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country’s course. You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time – not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals.
Let us, each of us, now embrace with solemn duty and awesome joy what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.
Thank you. God bless you, and may He forever bless these United States of America. *
“Of course, having on the market a rather large source of cheap labor depresses wages outside of that group, too – the wages of the white worker who has to compete. And when an employer can substitute a colored worker at a lower wage – and there are, as you pointed out, these hundreds of thousands looking for decent work – it affects the whole wage structure of an area, doesn’t it?”
Kennedy would have been among the only Democrats today who understood basic economics, but still supported the minimum wage on racist grounds. Most Democrats understand neither supply/demand economics nor the racist history of minimum wage laws and other progressive shibboleths.
All Presidents are products of their time. If JFK was indeed 98 and alive today I think he’d be a fan of Barack Obama. Just as I think that Nixon would be pretty hard right in today’s environment. A lot of the things Nixon did were simply a recognition of where the country was at the time. Same goes for Bill Clinton. Clinton was fairly conservative because the country was fairly conservative. If you ask him about most of the things he did back then, he now talks more like a liberal.
Given that JFK had a gay roommate at prep school, brought him with to the Kennedy compound for Christmas, and who stayed with him the rest of his life, including having his own bedroom in the White House, and even serving as trustee for the family trusts for JFK’s children after his death … well, I expect Lem Billings could have influenced JFK a bit on gay marriage. For that matter, Jackie Kennedy was quite acquainted with gay people from her connections in the Arts & Theatre world (and the rumored gay affairs by her father after his divorce). She too would have likely encouraged JFK to ‘evolve’.