Discovery Channel's Greatest American # 16: John F. Kennedy

All right, I'm going to get in trouble again.

JFK's primary virtue consisted of not wearing hats and dying young.

The former established him as a fashion icon, the latter ensured his appeal would be enduring and timeless.

Notice that nobody remembers where they were when Kennedy started the Farmgate operation which brought us into Vietnam (ostensibly to bring the French into NATO, fat lot of good that did). Nobody remembers where they were when Kennedy caved into Kruschev and yanked our missiles out of Turkey. Nobody remembers where they were when Kennedy stabbed the Cuban freedom fighters in the back in the Bay of Pigs.

Yet everybody of a certain age purports to recall exactly where they were when Kennedy was shot.

I think the Kennedy propaganda machine initiated by Bootlegger Joe, Nazi-cuddler has gotten the better of us.

Now, JFK was nowhere near the disaster as president that Jimmy Carter would prove to be, but he wasn't anywhere near as good as, say, Polk or Coolidge.

Strictly a farm-league presidente, but for the glamour of "Camelot".