Why is JFK still so beloved by the Left?

[DevotedDemocrat]

The guy is still hailed to this day as an amazing President, a boy King, a great leader, a champion of Liberal virtues and ideals. Yes, he was killed horribly and tragically. But let's ignore that for a minute.

The guy was an incredibly corrupt guy in his own right. Had no real passion or compassion for civil rights until it became politically necessary. He's the only President who who brought us to the very brink of nuclear war. He was the only Democratic Senator to not vote for censuring Joe McCarthy. He cut off all relations with Cuba, which exists to this day. He was a hawk and a rabid anti-Communist under whose leadership we upped our involvement in Vietnam and did coups in Vietnam, the Congo and the Dominican Republican and installed bloody dictators. He wasn't able to pass any major piece of legislation; his main lasting legacy is the Peace Corps. He fought to pass a tax cut using the same logic that Reagan and Republicans would later use when pushing supply side economics. He was to the right of even Eisenhower.

He doesn't sound very Liberal to me. So, outside of his charm and good PR and death, why is he treated as a God and beloved by the Left?

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Because Ted was his brother. And Ted wasn't that great.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

It fits the narrative of the young, courageous (right), crusading liberal President, struck down in his prime as he was about to change the world, end the war in Vietnam (right), pass Civil Rights, etc.

[Zioneer]

Ich bin ein Berliner, or something like that.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

His tragic death lets people attribute the parts of LBJ's term they like to him while not attributing the parts they don't like.  Also, we'll always remember him young rather than as an old as we do Carter and Clinton.

[Napoleon]

We remember young Clinton, searching valiantly for the meaning of the word "is".

[Oldiesfreak1854]

For the same reason he's still so beloved by Americans in general.  He was young and charismatic, and more importantly, he got assassinated.

It fits the narrative of the young, courageous (right), crusading liberal President, struck down in his prime as he was about to change the world, end the war in Vietnam (right), pass Civil Rights, etc.

But only after the March on Washington made him do it.  During that march, he expressed concern that the demonstrators would "sh*t" on the Washington Monument.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Kennedy was a vocal supporter of civil rights in the 1960 campaign, as was Nixon. This is why "unpledged" won the state of Mississippi and why over half of Alabama's electors refused to support Kennedy.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I think the bigger question is why it's now so trendy among the left to trash him?

[krazen1211]

Byron White.

[ag]

Now, if you consider who was the Dominican President whom they got overthrown, that particular bit of international involvement shouldn't bother either the left or the right too much. Say what you want, but Joaquín Balaguer, a nasty piece of work that he was, was still a major improvement on Trujillo under any human definition of "improvement". To the extent that there was CIA involvement, it was one of those things that, actually, justifies existence of that agency. Trujillo was a monster in anyone's book. The real crime was tolerating him that long - not getting rid of him.

[Paul Kemp]

I find him to be a fascinating character.

[Fuzzybigfoot]

I think the bigger question is why it's now so trendy among the left to trash him?

Because he cheated on his wife, was kind of meh on civil rights in the '50s, and other things.  

[Beet]

Because baby boomers have this idolized image of him as the emblem of their childhood -- before it all went wrong in the late Sixties. America was powerful, consensus-driven, and he was vaguely liberal and vaguely glamorous. Michael Moore, for instance, likes to hearken back to 1961 at the beginning of one of his movies. It shows a picture of him as a kid riding a tricycle. Innocence, etc. (it's ironic how the extended Fifties is considered a 'time of innocence' in the U.S. even though the holocaust had already happened) It's kind of like some older Millennials and Bill Clinton except a lot more extreme.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Because baby boomers have this idolized image of him as the emblem of their childhood -- before it all went wrong in the late Sixties. America was powerful, consensus-driven, and he was vaguely liberal and vaguely glamorous. Michael Moore, for instance, likes to hearken back to 1961 at the beginning of one of his movies. It shows a picture of him as a kid riding a tricycle. Innocence, etc. (it's ironic how the extended Fifties is considered a 'time of innocence' in the U.S. even though the holocaust had already happened) It's kind of like some older Millennials and Bill Clinton except a lot more extreme.

This. The martyrdom cult feeds into this notion of lost innocence, and in turn is fed by it.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I think the bigger question is why it's now so trendy among the left to trash him?

Because he cheated on his wife, was kind of meh on civil rights in the '50s, and other things.  

Yeah... but Johnson is adored...

[badgate]

I think the bigger question is why it's now so trendy among the left to trash him?

Because he cheated on his wife, was kind of meh on civil rights in the '50s, and other things. 

Yeah... but Johnson is adored...

Adored? No. Revered, maybe. But this lefty doesn't get the Kennedy trashing.

[H. Ross Peron]

I've always found it ironic that Democrats have idolized Kennedy and (increasingly) Clinton when they should be praising Truman and LBJ instead.

[anvi]

Ich bin ein Berliner

Which of course literally means: "I am a jelly-filled sugar donut."  I think on one of the shots of Kennedy saying that, you can see Willy Brandt sitting behind him with a slightly puzzled expression on his face. 

[Indy Texas]

Liberals don't really have a singular patron saint the way the Right has Ronald Reagan, but JFK comes very close. I've never understood it, particularly since JFK is always the president conservatives bring up when trying to get liberals to agree that tax cuts are always good all the time always and that going to the brink of nuclear war is a good idea too. I just think that like Reagan, Kennedy is an incredibly overrated man who pales, substantively, in comparison to his predecessor and his successor.

My father is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal and absolutely hates the Kennedys. He was obviously too young to vote for or against JFK but he strongly supported Jimmy Carter in the 1980 primaries and has often said that if he had been old enough to vote in 1960 he would have voted for Nixon and that the country would be better off had Nixon won that year.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Ich bin ein Berliner

Which of course literally means: "I am a jelly-filled sugar donut."  I think on one of the shots of Kennedy saying that, you can see Willy Brandt sitting behind him with a slightly puzzled expression on his face. 

This is a misconception. The word for the pastry in question in Berlin is 'Pfannkuchen' (why would it be referred to by its city of origin in that city?). Apparently the indefinite article is more correct for a sentence meant to be understood figuratively.

[Peter the Lefty]

      Kennedy did not bring us to the brink of nuclear war.  The Soviets did.  Like Obama, he was political with civil rights.  He did make pro-civil rights statements before it was politically convenient.  He just didn't act on it, since he needed the votes of Southern Dems to pass his social legislation and wanted to avoid pissing them off on civil rights and loosing their votes on the other stuff.  He wanted to wait until he had better Congressional numbers to act on civil rights.  Stupid and cowardly?  Yes.  Unusual in politics?  No.
      His tax cut was nothing like what you'd think of today.  The tax rate the rich paid was 91% beforehand.  He cut it to 70%.  Does that really sound like a trickle-down supply-sider to you?  And the South Vietnamese coup was designed to get rid of Diem.  I can't see why you'd want him to stay.  And yes, he made the mistake of sending military "advisors" to South Vietnam (Johnson was the one who sent ground troops, mind you.). But by the end of his life, he was planning to withdraw them. 
      Yes, his Senate years were pitiful.  And he was slow to recognize the urgency of civil rights.  But these other attacks seem to sound as if you're trying to hate him.

[Peter the Lefty]

I think the bigger question is why it's now so trendy among the left to trash him?

Because he cheated on his wife, was kind of meh on civil rights in the '50s, and other things. 

Yeah... but Johnson is adored...

Adored? No. Revered, maybe. But this lefty doesn't get the Kennedy trashing.

I get the same impression from most leftists; reverence for his substantive accomplishments accompanied with a mixed opinion of the man himself and his broader legacy.

There is some misplaced adoration for Johnson, but I think that's largely a product of there not having been another president who's given those on the left much to be proud of since FDR.

Yeah, we've never had a truly great liberal President.  We've had two whose views basically evolved toward the left while they were in office (FDR and JFK).  And we've had a few lefties who COULD have been INCREDIBLE Presidents (RFK, Humphrey, La Follette, Debs), but of the Presidents we have had, Truman is the only one I would truly classify as liberal from the moment he came to the job.

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

Because he presided over very good times.

[ilikeverin]

Some days I like to stop and think how much better the world would have been if RFK had become President.  Sigh.  He was everything his brother was, but better in every way.