Bush as JFK?

On his blog, Lee Siegel compares JFK and GWB and neither comes off looking especially well. I tend to think this comparison is a bit facile, based on some generalizations do not hold. Trust me when I say that I am not an ardent Kennedy defender, but let us also keep in mind that Kennedy died just as he was beginning to make serious strides as president. We simply have no idea what he might have done with civil rights -- an issue into which he had finally begun to grow as a leader -- nor with foreign affairs, his true passion. We have no idea what he would have done regarding Vietnam or if he would have used LBJ to get the same Civil Rights Act passed through Congress. We know precisely what we have gotten from the Bush presidency.

Siegel also points out that both were C students and implies that JFK was a dullard. yet no one who has listened to his press conferences can deny his quick wit and keen intelligence. JFK was always a playboy who may not much have cared about college. President Bush is simply incurious, which he couples with a self-righteousness that has served to hinder America.

In sum, Bush has been a bad president. Kennedy's was an unfinished presidency, for which he cannot be blamed. (Siegel also compares both unfavorably to Nixon, whom he then compares unfavorably to LBJ. So what we have in this schema is LBJ>Nixon>JFK=Bush. I don't agree entirely, but that's not really the point, is it?)

And while you are at it, if you enjoy this sort of thing (and you know that you do) check out Siegel's takedown of Christopher Hitchens. My personal favorite line? "The problem with swinging from sensational subject to sensational subject, as Christopher Hitchens has done with simian ease for nearly four decades, is that you run the risk of colliding, somewhere in the jungle of your various shticks, with the shadow of your former self."