Americans love a winner, they will not tolerate a loser: the proper lesson from history
I just read an article about the Kennedy-Nixon Debates [forwarded to me by a highly decorated, retired Marine Colonel]. Historically speaking, many to this day choose to confuse JFK's charm with his politics ... the JFK's Tax Cuts aside. The Mainstream Media, then and now romanticizes "Camelot." Revisionists make that time look positively rosy and cuddly, but the facts dispute the myth. The brash, young [43], new President Kennedy had tasted the sting of war and personal failure, losing his PT-109 Boat in World War II. He should have known better not to play debating games with National Security. It caused him to taste bitter defeat again and again.
Within this
article, author Humberto Fontova describes how John Kennedy, abetted by a fawning press, directly misled the public about a non-existent "missile gap" in one of the 1960 Debates with Richard Nixon. The Democrats hard-up for issues, claimed that a "missile gap" existed. Their "talking points" asserted that President Eisenhower and VP Nixon had allowed the Soviets to overtake us in nuclear missile technology and missile numbers. Humberto Fontova correctly outlines that the "missile gap" charge was preposterous and false. But Nixon, without direct numbers at hand during the debate, found himself having to defend Eisenhower Administration Policy correctness instead of making Kennedy back up his assertion. This technique is still standard fare in the Democrat debate playbook: Charm, Obfuscate, Mislead, Mis-state, and then Accuse.
I watched these debates, as did most my age and older. They were the first three Presidential Debates shown on TV. For many of us, it was a History Class assignment. The voting public was sucker-punched with Kennedy charm and the positive Kennedy media in 1960. John Kennedy looking fresh and tanned flashed charm and dash at the camera. Richard Nixon looked over-worked by contrast. My father remarked at the time that Kennedy was wearing make-up; he was. Nixon, in fact, had refused make-up and hence looked sallow and sweaty before the cameras. Poor Nixon: ever maligned by Liberals. He had dared to convict the Liberal darling, communist agent and traitor, Alger Hiss, of perjuring himself before Congress. For this, Nixon was smeared at every turn by his Liberal and Leftist adversaries. Nixon could not win the 1960 charm contests even though he made the stronger arguments in all three debates.
[Note: Jimmy Carter used similar distortions and an "aw-shucks" charm to hoodwink America in 1976. The bumbling and colorless Gerald Ford had no chance. Bill Clinton used similar techniques and youthful charm to distort the the records of, and defeat the hapless duo of World War II heroes, Navy Pilot G.H.W. Bush and Army Captain Robert Dole in 1992 and 1996. Republicans, with the exception of Ronald Reagan, have often "mis-underestimated" the importance of presentation, manner, and presence in the art of debate.]
And so it came to pass that Obama also hoodwinked the largely un-read, uninformed legion of "Food Stamp Voters" in 2008 with youthful charm, obfuscation, misleading statements, and false accusations. The Democrats running for Congress today and their head cheerleader, Barack Obama, are attempting the same thing again by claiming that their dismal record is good for America. They live in a world that see through the eyes of cognitive dissonance. Barack Obama's unwillingness to deal with the world as it is, and his unwillingness to fight for America's interests, is a sad lament of what we have become. Unbelievably, his delusions of grandeur, hubris, and narcissism have brought him into this Congressional campaign. So, OK then, let's go.
In Portland Oregon last May,
Obama actually claimed that President Kennedy had a demonstrated a Foreign Policy success during his 1961 Vienna Summit meeting with then Soviet Union dictator, Nikita Khrushchev. Strangely, even bizarrely, Barack Obama characterized the Vienna Summit as a Presidential meeting that led to the United States winning the Cold War.
Huh? Let's review the facts:
Khrushchev was no #. Khrushchev was one of Josef Stalin's most capable thugs and executioners. The ruthless Laverenti Beria [Stalin's Secret Police and Gulag Chief] and the clever Georgy Malenkov [a close associate of Stalin] were no match for Khrushchev. Beria was tried and executed for "treason" by Khrushchev and Malenkov was "disgraced and exiled" within the Soviet Union. Many will recall Khrushchev's his shoe-pounding event at the United Nations in early October of 1960 just before the three Nixon Kennedy Election debates. This was no subtle clue as to the nature of this man we were facing; he was not a man to toy with. All of this set a pretty impressive impressive table for the Soviet Union. This Summit was hardly a Foreign Policy success for the United States, unless perhaps you live the same parallel universe as Barack Obama.
The Vienna Summit happened not six weeks after John Kennedy failed Bay of Pigs Invasion where he withheld close air support from the Cuban Freedom Army in April 1961. Khrushchev took the Bay of Pigs failure as the measure of the man, Kennedy. During the Vienna Summit, in May 1961, JFK was maligned and browbeaten by a foreign leader as no other President had been in history. What were his advisors thinking? How could they have allowed such an undiplomatic treatment of our President by Soviet Dictator Nikita Khrushchev. JFK said afterward that he had" never met a man like this," and that this meeting "was the roughest thing in his life." Renowned diplomat and presidential advisor George Kennan had advised Kennedy that he was not well served to press ahead with this summit. Another lesson learned the hard way. (
source)
Following this unrequited trashing of an American President, Khrushchev pushed the envelope. The Berlin Wall was erected in August 1961, a provocation in direct violation of Berlin Quadripartite agreements guaranteeing free access to Occupied Berlin. Unlike Stalin's actions in the spring of 1948 that resulted in the Truman's thirteen month long Berlin Airlift, the United States did nothing against Khrushchev's "Wall". It was after this that Khrushchev pushed his luck too far: planning for and emplacing placing short and medium range, nuclear capable, ballistic missiles in Cuba. [Note: The Wall came down in 1989 only after Reagan openly challenged, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"]
The Cuban Missile Crisis did not need to happen
Those were tense days in October 1962. Khrushchev had overplayed his hand in Cuba. President Kennedy's military blockade of Cuba cause the Soviet Union to back off. Khrushchev nevertheless managed a measure of victory by getting Kennedy to remove nuclear capable Jupiter missiles from Turkey in exchange for Soviet missiles leaving Cuba. Because there were no measures for site inspection in Cuba, many analysts suggest to this day that many of those missiles had remained in Cuba. John Kennedy learned eventually, but almost too late, about the importance difference between "brinkmanship and chickenship." John Kennedy opened his eyes to reality, and his foreign policy became more focused on military readiness and planning. Somehow the lessons of these episodes elude Barack Obama.
One could argue that JFK's early indecisiveness and irresolute leadership and ineptitude during the Bay of Pigs traced forward directly to Castro's visceral hatred of America and consolidation of a Communist Cuban Government just 90 miles from Florida. Less than a month later, Nikita Khrushchev's brow beating of Kennedy further exacerbated tensions. Khrushchev's estimation of Kennedy's weakness, and the Fidel Castro's goading of Khrushchev for missile defenses precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis eighteen months later. JFK's assassination twelve months after that by Castro admirer and trained operative, Lee Harvey Oswald, is a disgraceful chapter in our history. The two were never connected ... or were they? That we did not follow Oswald's assassin's ties to Castro, and that we did not remove this ruthless killer, Castro, always seemed strange to me.
So, whither Obama Foreign Policy? Let me re-iterate: Obama thinks that the Kennedy-Khrushchev Vienna Summit was a great America Foreign Policy victory. That's why Obama advisors are fleeing this Administration like rats from a sinking ship. National Security Advisor, General James Jones, is the latest such person to leave. I don't blame him. I would not want to be associated with this hodge-podge, dreamer Administration either. Barack Obama is already loading his Presidential Afghan and Iraq Command Posts on the trucks and making ready at the railhead to "Beat Feet and Declare Defeat." So tell me Mr. President, what are our brave troops fighting for as you boogaloo your way out of Dodge City? Our Soldiers and Marines should not fight for your poll numbers, while you satisfy your Left-wing base. Can it be that American voters since 1960, favor opting out of the "good fight" because of Presidential politics? Let's find out.
Weakness, or the perception of weakness in the face of a ruthless and determined enemy of the United States has never ended well. President Obama has inserted himself into the Congressional Campaign. Why not also make this Congressional election a referendum of Obama's failed Foreign Policy, and his despicable recipe for American defeat and retreat from victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. Does the United States now openly favor vacillation, appeasement, and desertion of the call to defend freedom and Allied Causes? Or, should we favor the bold? Is the Obama-Clinton Foreign Policy all a calculated part of making America a Food Stamp Nation? It kinda' looks that way to me. I think we should put it to the vote!
I could be wrong ... but .... the very idea of giving up hard fought war gains in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and walking away from the honorable sacrifices of our fighting forces against the forces of evil are, indeed, very hateful to me.
Keep this lesson of history in mind as you vote November 2.
