NEXT THEY'LL BE SAYING HE BLEW THE MISSILE CRISIS :

Profiles in Pragmatism: John Kennedy and His Book (Edward J. Renehan Jr., History News Network)

Undoubtedly, John Kennedy was the source for the key notions expressed in Profiles. At the very least, he approved the exemplars of political courage presented. And he did so with a concrete ambition in mind: to make his readers (a.k.a., voters) believe that he himself revered and sought to reflect the altruistic bravery glamorized in his book.

This is a courage that involves the abandonment of cynicism. This is a courage that empowers one to swim valiantly against the tide of popular- and party-opinion, toward the greater national good, regardless of personal consequences. And this is courage that, when it appears in American political life, almost always does so as a con: an exercise in political sleight of hand.

No one understood this better than John Kennedy. A devoted student of both history and politics, Kennedy surely realized that many of the acts narrated in Profiles were simply not feats of courage. They were instead experiments in opportunism.

There's never a bad time for a dig at JFK. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 30, 2002 1:10 PM