That's the right-wng spin for a democratic president they just can't beat - rewrite history.
PJ has shown many times his lack of accurate knowledge of the Kennedy years, and has had his inaccurate claims disproven, but he keeps it up.
He's right about one thing - the times were somewhat different at the height of the cold war limiting Kennedy's options for his policies.
What he was able to do was remarkable considering those limitations.
At the time, something like pursuing a treaty to reduce nuclear testing was a *radical* move to the left.
The right just tends to worship power; in a cowardly manner, they'll try to put themselves with their powerful enemies, and they'll attack the weaker enemies they can.
I can show examples of Kennedy (effectively) and Carter (ineffectively) prioritizing human rights in our forieign policy; the right will mostly say very different things about each, not because the goals were different, but because they are not honest enough to attack the policies widely considered successfull usually, only the ones they can safely pile on.
They'll try to claim Kennedy's policies for their own by emphasizing the elements they agree with and overlooking the ones they don't, while they'll attack Carter's for the same things they just overlooked with Kennedy, and ignore the things Carter did they might agree with.
For example, as I iindicated in the previous post, who appointed the 'tough love' Fed Chairman Paul Volcker who is widely credited with getting inflation down, and was re-appointed by Reagan? Carter did, and he took the huge heat at the time - there was huge criticism of Volcker and Carter's appointment of him while he cause the pain that helped reduce inflation, and the praise came for Reagan later when the inflation rate was down.
How do Republicans describe that history? With zero credit for Carter, and all the credit for Reagan, of course.
Kennedy cut taxes (from 90% to 70% top rate), and he also battled the steel industry.
Look at how the right deals with the history - because Kennedy is someone they can't defeat, they are dishonest, and cherry pick that he cut taxes, and ignore that the *target* his curs led to was a 70% top rate (how about we go back to the Kennedy policy there?), and they *never* praise his battle with the steel industry. They simply cherry pick 'he cut taxes' and pretend he was someone else, to avoid the inconvenient facts that it's their ideology that's lacking, not the current democrats.
It's a cowardly, dishonest, way to deal with the history, and it leads to wrong conclusions on policy.
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