That’s still $10 million per year spent on vacations.
JFK was before my time, so I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but I see parallels between Kennedy & Obama, in that both were/are media darlings, and as a result the media went out of their way to paint them in the best possible light. If Obama had been assassinated, I suspect we’d be seeing the same sort of deification that Kennedy got.
I agree that he was assassinated at a time that kept him from getting negative press and let him get credit for good that LBJ implemented and LBJ take the blame for bad. But I think people are also overlooking that the assassination happened at a time when it was very big for a lot of baby boomers, who have had a lot of influence over pop culture, and are very centered on their own narrative. It also happened during the start of national media, which made it more of an ‘everyone’ event than it would have been before you could see it on TV. I think the fact that it happened at both a peak media time and peak Baby Boomer time made the JFK mythology stick a lot better than a similar event would have 10 years earlier or later.
Sure. But it’s the cost of security and operating Air Force One. It’s not like Obama is expensing his hotel rooms.
Forget it, Jake. This is Smudgetown.
That’s about the seventh time you’ve recommended that book. I may have read it before you were born. Have you read Hersh’s book?
Just the second time I mentioned Schlesinger’s book here, I think. I haven’t read the Hersh book about JFK, for the reasons I explained in another related thread. I have read other books of his.
Diceman writes:
> That’s still $10 million per year spent on vacations.
And how much did each of the recent Presidents spend per year on vacations? Please make sure you’re citing comparable figures in each case. You can’t cite the entire cost of all the Secret Service protection in one case and just the cost of a hotel room for the President in the other case. Until we know that, you’ve got nothing.
The accusation is that JFK stole Illinois and Texas, and if those two states had gone to Nixon, it would have put him to 270, and he would have won. I don’t know that the Texas accusation is true, and there are states he won with a closer margin than Texas (Hawaii, New Jersey), but that’s the claim.
I don’t usually take up that much for Obama but I agree. Until we know what is included in that figure, it is meaningless. I am sure that Air Force 1 costs in the 6 figures an hour range to operate just by itself. Obama wasn’t wealthy when he took office and his $400,000 salary is fairly low given the responsibilities and work-load (he has to pay for his personal household expenses and parties as well). I also doubt his “vacations” are real ones in the normal sense either. He may get to put fewer hours a day in a different location but there is no way to get away from that job and he is always on call.
Making an issue of presidential vacations and golf time has been a popular and idiotic form of political gotcha in recent years.
If Obama were to disappear to a hidden Hawaiian beach and refuse contact in the event of a crisis, it would mean something. I don’t see that happening.
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” --FDR
“The buck stops here.” --Harry Truman
“Beware of the military-industrial complex.” -Dwight Eisenhower
“Let us reason together.” --LBJ
“You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around any more.”
“I am not a crook.” --Nixon
“This is the moral equivalent of war.” --Jimmy Carter
“There you go again!” “There’s a bear in the woods.” --Reagan
“A thousand points of light.” --George Bush
“That depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.” “I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky.” --Bill Clinton
“We cannot give in to the soft bigotry of lowered expectations.” --George W. Bush
“I have something that rhymes with ‘bucket list.’” --Barack Obama
The quotes are there if you look for them.
Well, “I am not a crook.” is not exactly inspirational, is it ?
Only the FDR quote is in the same league as JFK’s greatest hits. The rest are either bad things to remember someone for or stuff most people don’t actually remember.
Oh yeah, FDR’s “A day that will live in infamy” also comes to mind.
Here are a bunch of Presidential quotes:
Look through them and tell me if you think Kennedy’s quotes were so much better. Frankly, I think all the Presidential quotes I’ve looked at sound to me like typical inspirational quotes - inspiring when you first hear them and haven’t had time to think about them, but only applicable to limited special situations when you think carefully about them. I don’t think inspirational quotes are very useful. They’re all supposed to get people cheering when they’re said in a rousing speech, but they aren’t that applicable to most circumstances.
I don’t think it’s so much a matter of who’s quotes were better, but rather whose quotes come to mind most readily when the president in question is mentioned. Most people seem to think of Kennedy’s “Ask not” and “Put a man on the moon” and “We will pay any price” quotes almost simultaneously with mention of his name. No other quote, not even FDR’s “fear inself” quote made during a time of war, comes to mind so readily with the mention of that president’s name.
In other words, Kennedy’s charisma caused these quotes to resonate with and be taken to heart by the populace in such a deep and long-lasting way that he’s famous for them even now, fifty-two years after his death. I don’t think the same could be said for the other quotes mentioned.
A little perspective here. Vietnam didn’t ramp up until LBJ pushed the Gulf Of Tonkin Resolution through Congress. And frankly, I think the Vietnamese were more committed to National Liberation than Communism, though they’d say the words and act like they were to get the military support to get the French and later the U.S. out of there.
During the Bush I administration, I think it was, on a round trip to and from Denver, I crossed paths with AF 1. Besides the Presidential aircraft, parked near it on the tarmac was at least one C-141, because I guess there’s no way to fit an armored stretch Lincoln or a covey of armored black Yukons (or whatever the the USSS used back then) in a Boeing 747. Let’s look at the corrected for inflation costs for vacations of ALL Presidencies before you start shouting how Obama is wasting taxpayer money.
Good observation. The fact is, Ike knew that all the “prestige” projects that Kennedy wanted were just window dressing-he refused to be drawn into the “space race”. The alleged “missile gap” with Russia was (mostly) propaganda floated by big defense contractors (Raytheon, General Dynamics) who wanted big $$ contracts. Ike spoke out against thye military industrial complex-while Kennedy fell for it, lock, stock and barrel. And historians tell us that the whole Cuban Millile “crisis” was mostly posturing-the USA had missiles in Turkey, pointed at Russia as well…
Kennedy lives on because of a great propaganda machine, mainly run and financed by his father.
Nah, he’s just popular.
There you go. Kennedy very nearly STARTED WW3 with his shit. Kennedy fucked up the Bay of Pigs things. IIRC, it was a war crime, but, I could be wrong. It doesn’t matter fuck all if Eisenhower planned it; Kennedy could have stopped it in an instant. He interfered in the planning. Once he screwed the pooch, he kept the invasion training camps going.
The Cuban Missile Crisis came about because the Cubans appealed to the Soviet Union for help, after the US invasion the previous year. Then, JFK committed an act of war by blockading Cuba. Kruschev, rather than adhering to the laws of war and of free nations, allowed his ships to be stopped rather than defend the USSRs rights. Rather than simply promise to remove the Turkish missiles, which were 2 miles away from Russia, he threatened a war with Cuba.
And on, and on…
He is deified because the majority of people in the US were/are Democrats, he made for great press, and his propaganda machine was second to none. He was also aristocratic, and the US, as every other nation, does love it’s royalty.
An equally valid explanation is that Kennedy is remembered for his pithy quotes because there’s not much else to remember.