Kennedy certainly handled the Cuban Missile Crisis better than Trump would have. Trump was presented with a relatively simple problem. Instead of having 13 days to solve a sudden crisis, Trump had months and months and months to plan, how to coordinate with the states, to determine how to distribute the vaccine, how to determine who gets the vaccine, how those people are to be notified and instructed and have places would be the best place to administer them. Instead, each state is trying to figure that out on its own in a rush. Of course, Trump, may have done better had he not been distracted by other vital matters, like how to steal the election if he should happen to lose to Biden.
But I would argue that the election of Kennedy set in motion a dangerous trend. Kennedy was not the choice of the powers that be in the Democratic Party. Johnson was. Up until then, a party’s candidate was chosen by party insiders, working in “smoke filled rooms”, who decided who was best. This process produced men like Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson and yes, Richard Nixon, to be the party’s Presidential candidate, or if the health of the current President in serious doubt, Vice President.
Kennedy marked the transition into a new era. Various states started to say, the people should decide, not party insiders. And Kennedy had the charisma to appeal to the people and won the nomination and the election. Since then, the people would decide who the candidate would be, not party insiders.
I think this was an unfortunate change. We would have been better advised to leave well enough alone. Because the one thing that both Kennedy and Trump had in common, was charisma. Both were wildly popular with a large segment of the population. While this new way can get us a good President, like Kennedy, it can give us a disastrous one, like Trump. Trump was about the last choice of the Republican party insiders, but he just kept winning primaries and got the nomination anyway. And yes, while the old system was not perfect, party insiders choose Nixon, even Nixon was not nearly as bad as Trump. Both had a couple of screws loose, but Nixon never tried to become a dictator.
So, it looks like we have gotten rid of Trump. Problem, solved, right? No. Because we don’t know who the people might get infatuated with ten years from now. I think the judgment of the party insiders is sounder than the public who might get impressed with some minor TV star. Party insiders might miss a brilliant choice like Kennedy but they are not likely to pick a disastrous one like Trump. I wish we could go back to the old system.
