[Peace-discuss] The Kennedys' fake liberalism, then and now

[C. G. Estabrook]

[There's a lot here; so, some quotations from your note, with comments by me.
--CGE]


[1] "There never has been any real Left-leaning liberalism in America that took
hold of the mainstream political discourse in America."
	 The vagaries of American political discourse (they aren't accidental) leave 
you with a phrase as awkward as "Left-leaning liberalism" (LLL? LOL!), and much 
of the effort of American propaganda organs -- from President Wilson's
"Committee of Public Information" in 1917 on -- has been to persuade people
that "mainstream political discourse" (MSPD) was not what it seemed, but I'd
argue that MSPD had a large dose of LLL in pre-World War I socialism and the
pre-WWII labor movement.
	In fact, one motive for American leaders to enter both world wars was the 
desire to suppress the debate over the growing domestic class war.  Then, after 
the Second World War, (as I said in an earlier post) the social
movements that got underway in the sixties (and in fact expanded in the next
decade, the '70s being by far the most progressive decade since WWII) certainly
represented your LLL.
	That's why the "excesses of the '60s and '70s" have to be calumniated by 
politicians on all sides -- as Obama did last week.  The LLL of the '60s and 
'70s was seen as so dangerous by the US ruling class (as they said in the 
Trilateral Commission's 1976 book, "The Crisis of Democracy") that it had to be 
countered by one of the great ideological rectification campaigns in US history, 
comparable to and more extensive than the Palmer Raids and McCarthyism:
neoliberalism (or the "Reagan revolution").
	We're now getting some good accounts of what happened ca. 1980-present, as in 
David Harvey (2006) "A Brief History of Neoliberalism."


[2] "Kennedy was the most liberal President we have had since Truman without a
doubt."
	I strongly doubt it.  If we judge a president's liberalism from the
accomplishments of his administration rather than from the secret places of his
heart (Kennedy might lose on that, too), then the most liberal admin since WWII
was Nixon-Ford.  That's when the "excesses of the '60s and '70s" matured into
legislation, prompting the neoliberal counterattack in the Carter/Reagan years.


[3] "I never have tried to indicate that the Kennedys were anything other than
managers and stewards of an imperial, expansionist state. "
	Good.


[4] "People like Lippmann and Hofstadter would be viewed as pinkos in today's
media right-wing discourse."
	From the European Journal of Communication (2002) vol. 17.2, p. 163: "...the 
influential American journalist Walter Lippman [1889-1974 -- a member of
Wilson's propaganda CPI, incidentally] advocated consent engineering early in
the 20th century.  For Lippman, the ‘manufacture of consent’ was both necessary
and favourable, predominantly because, in Lippman’s view, ‘the common interests’
– meaning, presumably, issues of concern to all citizens in democratic societies
– ‘very largely elude public opinion entirely’. Lippman postulated that ‘the
common good’ ought to be ‘managed’ by a small ‘specialized class’ ... Lippman
recommended that the role of the electorate – the ‘bewildered herd’, as he
called them – be restricted to that of ‘interested spectators of action’ ...
Lippman predicted that the ‘self-conscious art of persuasion’ would eventually
come to preface every ‘political calculation’ and ‘modify every political
premise’."
	The Kennedy administration certainly believed that, as did pinkos (a curiously 
old-fashioned word) of the Leninist variety.  But it's shockingly anti-democratic.


[5] "The Cuban Missile Crisis was largely saved by backroom negotiations between
Kennedy and Kruschev."
	There's some truth in that, but it's a tribute to Khrushchev's good sense that 
he was willing to negotiate away something he had a right to do -- defend an 
ally. Kennedy was willing (according to Ted Sorensen's memoirs) to accept a 
probability of 1/3 to 1/2 of nuclear war, in order to establish that the US 
alone had the right to maintain missiles on the borders of a potential
enemy.  In secret discussions with top planners during the Cuban missile crisis,
the Kennedy brothers expressed their concern that Castro might use the missiles
to deter U.S. military intervention in Venezuela. (And incidentally only 40
years later did we come to realize how the restraint of one Russian submarine
commander prevented the nuclear exchange the Kennedyites were willing to see
happen; that's been called the most dangerous moment in human history.)


[6] "I think you have to look at the Kennedy years more generally in a wider
context---Kennedy was as good as we progressives were going to get..."
	That may, horribly enough, be true -- but it's no reason to support Kennedy, 
then or now.  Progressives said the same thing about Hitler in 1933, Mussolini 
in 1922, and of course Lenin in 1918.  Again, not a reason to support any one of 
them.


[7] "Things are far worse now than then---at least then we had the pretense of
following international law and engaging in a multilateral, realist foreign policy."
	I disagree, as I said in an earlier post.  Even though the Bush II admin may be 
the most dangerous in US history, it is nevertheless far more circumscribed in 
its evil-doing than Kennedy's was. The Kennedy-Johnson admin conducted a much 
more murderous war in a area peripheral to US interests, with no appreciable 
domestic dissent for years. Bush launched a war at the center of US foreign 
policy concerns only after the most massive anti-war demonstrations in history, 
and he'll leave office universally reviled in spite of a narrow military success 
(i.e, the US will continue in effective control of ME energy resources).
	The casual murder and mayhem that Kennedy ordered throughout Latin America 
became more difficult, even by Reagan's time.  When the Reagan administration 
announced in 1981 that their foreign policy would be a "War on Terror," they had 
in mind invading Central America as Kennedy had invaded SE Asia -- but they 
found they couldn't do it.  Reagan's foreign policy was driven underground 
("Iran-Contra") by the US anti-war movement, most of it church-based.  Reagan 
killed hundreds of thousands, but now the Bush people (mostly Reagan people) 
can't even do that, except on the periphery (Haiti).  A self-aware Latin America 
and domestic criticism would prevent it.


[8] "The whole reason JFK was assassinated was that he didn't view a major
escalation in Vietnam as a prudent policy----the detailed archival work of Peter
Dale Scott and especially John Newman really bear this out."
	I don't know why Kennedy was assassinated; since I think that Oswald probably 
did it by himself, the only question is his motive.  But I do think that the 
idea that Kennedy was killed because he intended to withdraw from Vietnam is a 
fairy tale (to use a current analytic term) -- more a matter for the 
psychoanalyst's couch than the historian's archive.
	Oliver Stone and others want to believe that the "good daddy," JFK, was killed 
by the "bad daddy," LBJ -- since Freud, that's the basic story.  But there's 
little evidence for it. LBJ continued with JFK's cabinet, JFK's advisors and 
JFK's plans; the major invasion of South Vietnam (and the war was always 
primarily against the South, because they wouldn't accept the government we'd 
picked out for them) occurred under Kennedy in 1962.
	The detailed record is analyzed by Chomsky in "Rethinking Camelot" (1993), 
which is directed particularly against John Newman's arguments.  (And Alex 
Cockburn was his usual amusing and devastating self in columns discussing Peter 
Dale Scott.)


[9] "One final point----we cannot look at politics by only judging individual
leaders.  We tend to personalize political eras and particular administrations,
but we also must situate them within broader ideological, political, and
cultural contexts.  Administrations also are complex and function not so much as
a direct reflection of a President's peculiar temperment and personality; but as
an amalagamation of bureaucratic relationships amongst competing departments,
personalities, and interest groups that also have a fair degree of private
motives and autonomy (insofar as there is some divsersity amongst interests
working for the ruling classes primarily) within the framework of government
operations."
	I quite agree.  And for that reason we have to consider the general political 
and social context.  It was remarked with some insight long ago that "the 
history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" -- a 
class being roughly a group with the same role in the process of production. 
("Mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can 
pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.")  One cannot deduce history from 
class struggle, but it is a heuristic -- it suggests questions to be asked.  How 
did underlying class interests affect or condition the particular complexities 
of a given situation?  There's no way to determine that other than going and 
taking a look.
	Cui bono? -- whose interests were served by the Kennedy administration?  It's a 
good place to start.


Regards, CGE


n.dahlheim at mchsi.com wrote:
> Carl, First, there never has been any real Left-leaning liberalism in America
>  that took hold of the mainstream political discourse in America---even the 
> Progressive movement at the start of the 20th century failed at creating 
> that.  But, since WWII made America the hegemonic global power rather than 
> just a regional power---with the rest of the "civilized" world in tattered 
> ruins---a Left-leaning imperialism was never going to materialize without at 
> least a strong consensus liberalism surviving and thriving in spite of the 
> pressure to militarize.  I think this is the real meaning behind Ike's 
> cryptic farewell speech in 1961.  So, consider the appropriate standards I am
>  employing here in judging the various Administrations.  If your measuring 
> stick is a very principled Left-leaning liberalism, I don't think we can 
> adequately assess the progression and the machinations of our odious 
> militaristic state. That said, Kennedy was the most liberal President we have
>  had since Truman without a doubt.  Yes, LBJ passed the Great Society but his
>  radical escalation of Vietnam through the manufactured Gulf of Tonkin as
> well as the vicious repression of race riots and student protests mitigates
> that accomplishment. Also, the virtual destruction of Great Society programs
> today more generally as a result of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II
> makes the point null and void.
> 
> I think you also underestimate the importance of the unique inner dynamics of
>  the Kennedy White House.  I never have tried to indicate that the Kennedys 
> were anything other than managers and stewards of an imperial, expansionist 
> state.  They were not progressives, and with the exception of RFK during 
> moments in 1968, never spoke that way in their rhetoric.  They were 
> liberal-minded imperial stage managers and ruthlessly practical politicians 
> who would appeal to the liberal intelligencia of the day in media and 
> academia----people like Lippmann and Hofstadter who would be viewed as pinkos
>  in today's media right-wing discourse.  The Cuban Missile Crisis was largely
>  saved by backroom negotiations between Kennedy and Kruschev---if anything, 
> the madness of the CIA and the Joint Cheifs shows up in the EXCOM meetings of
>  the Cuban Missile Crisis most poignantly of all.  Kennedy, supported only by
>  Sorenson and his younger brother, really had to play a careful game.  The 
> Cuban Missile Crisis nearly occasioned a military coup---Kennedy had to work 
> with those people and assuade and placate them.  I don't think Kennedy was 
> some dove fighting a moral crusade against them, nor do I think he was 
> reckless in discharging the Cuban Missile Crisis considering the presence of 
> nuts like Lemnitzer and LeMay who placed heavy pressure on the President to 
> go to nuclear war.  I think JFK's pragmatism and his willingness to talk to 
> Kruschev (who himself was facing hawks similar to our Joint Chiefs at the 
> same time as Kennedy was) really made the critical difference in staving off 
> a nuclear holocaust.  I think you have to look at the Kennedy years more 
> generally in a wider context---Kennedy was as good as we progressives were 
> going to get...  Things are far worse now than then---at least then we had 
> the pretense of following international law and engaging in a multilateral, 
> realist foreign policy.  The whole reason JFK was assassinated was that he 
> didn't view a major escalation in Vietnam as a prudent policy----the detailed
>  archival work of Peter Dale Scott and especially John Newman really bear
> this out.
> 
> This segues to one final point----we cannot look at politics by only judging 
> individual leaders.  We tend to personalize political eras and particular 
> administrations, but we also must situate them within broader ideological, 
> political, and cultural contexts.  Administrations also are complex and 
> function not so much as a direct reflection of a President's peculiar 
> temperment and personality; but as an amalagamation of bureaucratic 
> relationships amongst competing departments, personalities, and interest 
> groups that also have a fair degree of private motives and autonomy (insofar 
> as there is some divsersity amongst interests working for the ruling classes 
> primarily) within the framework of government operations.
> 
> Best, Nick