is Ted the best example of how JFK would have been like

[freepcrusher]

had he lived? A lot of things I've heard about JFK led me to believe he was not very liberal (hawkish, virulently anticommunist, possibly antisemitic). But judging by his younger brother Ted, its possible he might have morphed into a hard-left liberal later on. If I recall, both Ted and Bob started out as old-line liberals whose views were moved considerably to the left by Vietnam.

[SPC]

When I first clicked on this I thought you were talking about this Ted.

[Sol]

When I first clicked on this I thought you were talking about this Ted.

This is probably closer to the truth

[Kaine for Senate '18]

When I first clicked on this I thought you were talking about this Ted.

Same

[DemPGH]

No, JFK was not a peace hippie, but he surely was NOT a warhawk, and to your question, would he have gone in the direction of his brother Ted, I think that's the general idea. Sure, he probably would have.

Someone who knows I love JFK picked up for me Listening In for Christmas, which is a written sampling of his White House conversations with audio CDs, and it is yet another source that I have that would easily dispel many of these myths about JFK, and frankly I have never heard that stuff, so I don't know where it's suddenly coming from. There's currently a very reckless impulse, though, to be iconoclastic about literally everything and everyone in some "armchair historian" writer circles, and who knows why. Maybe they want noticed.

(It seems to have really gotten started with Christopher Columbus, and to a degree that was acceptable: they offered criticisms of Columbus' character based on 21st century values. Okay. Then they moved to the founders, to Jefferson, and if it's moving to JFK now, then IMO the "armchair iconoclasts" have lost the little bit of credibility they had left after assaulting Jefferson.)

Anyway, JFK inherited ingrained, highly complex, very bad policies, and he consistently resisted urgings to increase troops in Vietnam, to strike Cuba, he was consistently skeptical of the military, his own Joint Chiefs, and at times the CIA. He didn't want to invade Cuba when they did, and on and on. About a year and a half into his presidency he decided he wanted out of the vast majority of these engagements, which would have been a marvelous idea, and he wanted clearly a more cooperative relationship with the USSR. That's not in any way in question. Read his speeches on it. It was awful ballsy in the Spring of 1963 to tell America that it was time to reassess our attitudes toward Russia, and of course he carefully chose university students, the young and the educated, to hear that wonderful speech. He was not the hawk, they were all around him.

Anti-semitic is more an insult than anything else.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

When I first clicked on this I thought you were talking about this Ted.

Same

[Napoleon]

Bill Clinton obvi.

[minionofmidas]

If JFK had lived, Ted would have been just some rich playboy, never a career politician.

[TNF]

JFK did move a lot to the left over the course of his presidency, but I doubt he'd be anything like Teddy had he lived. Bobby was the most conservative of the bunch and was still a Cold Warrior, even in 1968, albeit an unorthodox one (Teddy of course pretty much abandoned his own Cold Warrior stance after the 1980 campaign). If anything, I'd say JFK would be like Scoop Jackson in his later years.

[SPC]

If JFK had lived, Ted would have been just some rich playboy, never a career politician.

He was elected to the Senate in 1962. Can one be a senator and not be a career politician?

[Grumpier Than Thou]

When I first clicked on this I thought you were talking about this Ted.

I thought the same exact thing.

[minionofmidas]

If JFK had lived, Ted would have been just some rich playboy, never a career politician.

He was elected to the Senate in 1962. Can one be a senator and not be a career politician?

I have made up my mind. Do not confuse me with facts.

[BaldEagle1991]

When I first clicked on this I thought you were talking about this Ted.

Ha, me too.

I bet that's going in the college mindset list next year.