This weekend, I re-watched the motion picture Thirteen Days, which depicts the leadership of John F. Kennedy – in my opinion, the last great American president – through the grave Cuban Missile Crisis of the early 1960’s. The film, and the facts, concerning that dire crisis got me thinking about Kennedy in comparison to the two individuals whom I believe are the worst presidents of my lifetime (worse even than the hapless presidency of Jimmy Carter and the very dangerous one of Richard Nixon) – Barack Obama and George W. Bush.I believe it probable that Obama would have mishandled the Cuban Missile Crisis by pushing the diplomacy route to death and ultimately backing down and permitting the Soviet nuclear missiles to simply stay in Cuba (at huge national security risk to the United States). I could be wrong about that, but I think that’s probably how it would have turned out.
The path Bush would have pursued is even more certain: He would have taken the reckless advice that the military brass was giving Kennedy and would have invaded Cuba. Can there be any question about that? Kennedy knew where that would ultimately likely lead and wanted to avoid that option at all costs. And he was damn right, because the chances are likely higher than 90% (and I’ll spare you all of the little facts and details as to why) that such a course of action would have ultimately resulted in World War III – a full-scale nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the effective end of the world, at least for the American and Russian nations.
Kennedy’s leadership was grounded in conviction and beliefs, not narrow and extreme world views and ideologies like those so dangerously and destructively pursued by Obama and Bush. Through the utterly terrible “leadership” of those two individuals (which is about the nicest word I can manage to refer to the two of them), the United States currently teeters on the brink of an economic and social collapse into chaos. These are Very Scary Days, and great men and leaders such as Jack Kennedy, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln must be not only rolling over, but also weeping, in their graves.
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