Answer:
Larry Sabato when asked the contrast between myth and achievements. Sabato, a well-known Virginia political scientist author of Kennedy Half Century, describes the merits: “His management of the missile crisis with Cuba is remembered as a triumph, having focused on civil rights and peacekeepers can Be considered a living monument to Kennedy. His style, so inspiring, also survives, and that doesn't have to be underestimated. ”
Among the sins, he points out that JFK “was not as committed to civil rights as he should until the last months of his life, and both he and his brother ignored civil liberties to enter into an infamous alliance with the FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover. " "Obviously," he adds, "the Bay of Pigs invasion was a disaster, but he learned from it, and in a president it is very important to see his learning curve." Sabato argues that, had he survived, the mistakes of Lyndon B. Johnson with Vietnam or Richard Nixon with Watergate would not have occurred. As for "Kennedy's moral failures," he adds, "they are as reckless as those of Bill Clinton or those of Donald Trump."
The Americans have digested the character's chiaroscuro, that the same man of the fabulous speeches had a sordid sexual history, had won the elections among rumors of fraud, put his own brother's attorney general and, as he approached a few years ago The Dark Side de Camelot (Seymour Hersh, 1997), even had relations with the mafia.
Kennedy's analysis of academics, more focused on concrete achievements, is always harder than that of the popular imaginary. "The sentimental factor also deserves to take its place in the exam to a leader," says Sabato.
JFK is also associated with a time of splendor that began to decline after his death. “The United States was still the world's industrial leader, an oil leader, it was seen on the bright side of the Cold War and Vietnam had not yet become a primarily American war, the tensions of the sixties had not yet exploded ... The sensation is that everything started to go wrong after his death, ”explains Michael Kazin, a history professor in Georgetown. He was handsome, witty, had a beautiful family and felt on television like a fish in the water. “He was a television celebrity, the first president that was; Donald Trump is too, but divisive. ”
