Debunking Right-Wing Myths: Kennedy Wasn’t a Conservative, He Was a Progressive.
Kennedy imposed a 74% tax rate, supported peace, pushed for equality for all, and proposed socialized medicine all things Conservative decry.
John F. Kennedy was a young, handsome, and brilliant man who was elected president in 1960 and was assassinated in 1963. Kennedy’s assassination spawned mass speculation around the circumstances of his death and in many cases outright conspiracy theories around his death. However, the conspiracy theories aren’t the only things spread about Kennedy that aren’t based in reality, there are many lies spread about Kennedy’s ideology and politics. The most prominent example of a lie spread about Kennedy’s politics is that Kennedy was a conservative and would be a Republican in today’s political environment. The difference between Kennedy was killed by the Military-Industrial Complex and Kennedy was a hard-right conservative, is that there are enough facts to support the claim that Kennedy was killed by war-profiteers to start a war. Meanwhile, there is almost nothing to support the claims that Kennedy was a conservative other than Kennedy misquotes. Truth is that Kennedy is actually too left-wing for today's Democrats.
Now, this myth about Kennedy’s ideology was spread by conservatives in order to win Democratic voters over in order to support their policies. This is very much like the myths conservatives have spread about Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. in how they try to insert their beliefs into historical figures and claim them as their own. It has been spread by the likes of Fox News, PragerU, and right-wing propagandists such as George Will and Ira Stoll. In fact, on the 50-year anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination, Stoll published a book called JFK, Conservative where he lays out his revisionist history of President Kennedy. On top of that TIME and Buzzfeed News actually gave Stoll a platform to spread his myth, and this has only damaged the credibility of TIME and Buzzfeed News by allowing someone to publish false information through them. This myth about Kennedy has been debunked by progressives, liberals, libertarians, and even conservatives themselves. Yet, despite how this myth has been debunked from all sides of the political spectrum, unfortunately, this myth still sticks with the misinformed and the poor pathetic viewers of Fox News. So it’s time to debunk the myth about Kennedy’s politics from his fiscal, domestic, and foreign policy.
MYTH #1: Kennedy was for Supply-Side Economics
This is conservatives' favorite myth about John F. Kennedy, they claim that Kennedy was for tax cuts and therefore supported Supply-Side Economics. This flies in the face of what Kennedy actually supported. What Kennedy supported was a tax system where the rich paid their fair share in taxes on both the surface and in reality. One of the biggest issues Kennedy had with the Eisenhower tax plans were the loopholes that were included in them. These loopholes allowed the rich to get off scot-free without paying taxes. So while Kennedy reduced the top marginal tax rate from 91% to 74%, he also closed loopholes in the tax code which forced the rich to actually pay their taxes instead of finding a way to get out of paying their taxes. Secondly, Kennedy never pitched his tax plan as a tax cut or tax cuts, he pitched them as tax changes. Why? It’s because Kennedy didn’t plan on continuing to sign tax cuts into law as Reagan and Bush Jr. did, he planned on also signing tax increases into law to pay for programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and the Universal Healthcare program he wanted to implement. Yes, that’s right conservatives, Kennedy supported that scary socialist healthcare program that Bernie Sanders is campaigning for. As a matter of fact, Ronald Reagan recorded an album where he expressed his disapproval of John F. Kennedy’s healthcare proposals. Reagan decried the idea of “socialized medicine,” Kennedy endorsed it. Kennedy also supported raising the minimum wage, which conservatives oppose. The first bill Kennedy signed into law raised the minimum wage from 75¢ to 1.25$. Yes, conservatives Kennedy raised the minimum wage.
The irony of conservatives claiming that they’d support Kennedy’s tax plans is that they fervently opposed Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s tax plans and called those tax plans socialist plans. Obama proposed a top marginal tax rate of 37% and Clinton proposed a top marginal tax rate of 40% and conservatives were livid over those tax plans. However, they unironically turn around and point to Kennedy’s 74% top marginal tax rate as the ideal tax rate. In all fairness, conservatives don’t actually present the tax rates themselves, they just refer to the president’s tax plans without the actual tax rate percentages. Of course when Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talk about implementing a top marginal tax rate of 70% conservatives heads will explode, but still, unironically point to Kennedy’s tax laws as ideal tax laws. The ideal tax rates conservatives point to are the Reagan tax rates, for most of Reagan’s presidency, the top marginal tax rate was 50%. In his last two years in office, Reagan dropped the top marginal tax rate to 28%. Reagan’s 28% top marginal tax rate is what conservatives want, they’d vomit if they saw Kennedy pushing for a 74% top marginal tax rate. As Richard (RJ) Eskow writes in his piece “The “Real JFK” — Not Conservative, and Not Forgotten” for Common Dreams “When today’s conservatives embrace rates like that, we’ll call John Kennedy a conservative.” Basically saying if Kennedy was really a conservative they should support higher tax rates then the ones they actually support. As a matter of fact, at the time of Kennedy’s candidacy for president and his presidency, he was labeled as a socialist. When Jack Kennedy had eyed Lyndon Johnson to be his vice-president, Republican Senator and eventual Presidential Candidate Barry Goldwater called Johnson and advised Johnson not to accept Kennedy’s offer for vice-president. Goldwater warned Johnson that Kennedy’s “socialist” ideas would damage Johnson’s political career.
John F. Kennedy wanted to increase revenue to the government to increase the amount of money to the government so he could increase the amount of money he could spend on healthcare, education, and housing. Today’s Republicans want to cut spending on healthcare, education, and housing. In fact, in 2004 George W. Bush campaigned on privatizing Medicare, which is essentially getting rid of Medicare as we know it and giving creating an entirely for-profit version of Medicare. Basically Bush wanted the elderly to have to put up with for-profit middlemen invading their healthcare means, whereas Kennedy proposed Medicare so the elderly don’t have to deal with for-profit middlemen with their healthcare decisions. Also, today’s Republicans have expanded the kinds of loopholes that Kennedy wanted to close. The Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts were riddled with loopholes that allowed rich people and corporations to get off scot-free without paying taxes. As Bernie Sanders has pointed out in the 2018 tax year Amazon paid nothing in taxes, and it’s because the Trump tax cuts included loopholes that allowed them to do so.
If anything Kennedy’s tax policies were too left-wing for today’s Democrats, just look at how significantly higher the Kennedy tax rates are in comparison to the Obama and Clinton tax rates. Also, Obama nor Clinton proposed tax plans which closed the kinds of loopholes that Kennedy’s tax plans closed. One important thing about Kennedy’s economic policies that should be noted is that Walter Heller, the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, advised Kennedy on tax policy, and Heller was a known proponent of Keynesian Economics or Demand-Side Economics. So yes Kennedy actually opposed Trickle-Down Economics. It is important to note that Kennedy didn’t live long enough to sign his tax bill into law nor did he live long enough to sign the bills that created Medicare and Medicaid. Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded Kennedy following his assassination in 1963 and signed those bills into law. It is ironic that conservatives want to claim Kennedy as one of them when they view Obama and Clinton as radical socialists.
MYTH #2: Kennedy was conservative on race
There are actually two myths about Kennedy’s positions when it came to social issues. One is that Kennedy secretly opposed Civil Rights and that he reluctantly got on board with the movement. This is a myth typically pushed by people who deny the Southern Strategy and that the ideologies of the two major parties changed in the mid-20th century. The only thing conservatives use to support their argument is that Kennedy approved of J. Edger Hoover’s wiretap of Martin Luther King Junior. Of course, it would hurt conservatives to actually learn the facts of why Kennedy did that. Hoover had pressured Kennedy into doing so by convincing him that communists were involved in King’s movement. Kennedy caved into Hoover’s pressure and approved of the wiretap. Another fact conveniently ignored was that Kennedy gave Hoover limited wiretapping capabilities, but Hoover broke those limitations. Also, Kennedy had informed King about the communists in King’s and advised King to excommunicate them. King excommunicated one of them and kept the rest. This hindered any plans Hoover had of using the FBI to bring down King. While Kennedy’s approval of Hoover’s wiretap of King was a mistake, it wasn’t Kennedy’s the only time as president where he had involved himself with the Civil Rights movement. The wiretap was the only negative action Kennedy took regarding the Civil Rights Movement.
Conservatives deliberately ignore the fact that Kennedy had used federal troops to protect James Merideth as he enrolled in the University of Mississippi. Then later, Kennedy federalized the Alabama US National Guard after Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked two African American students from entering the University of Alabama. Kennedy had used the National Guard to ensure that Vivian Malone and James Hood could enter the University of Alabama without a problem. This showdown between Kennedy and Wallace is considered a defining moment of Kennedy’s presidency. Another action Kennedy took regarding Civil Rights that Conservatives purposely ignore is that Kennedy had used federal troops to protect Dr. King and the Freedom Riders when white supremacists had rallied outside of one of King’s speeches he gave to the Freedom Riders in Mississippi. These federal troops had escorted King and the Freedom Riders to safety after King finished his speech.
Now that the “Kennedy was a secret racist” smear has been debunked, it’s time to debunk the next conservative myth regarding Kennedy. The second Kennedy myth conservatives like to peddle, is that Kennedy opposed racial quotas and affirmative action. The “Kennedy was a conservative” crowd likes to misquote Kennedy regarding this issue. First of all, racial quotas are illegal in the United States and there is not an elected Democrat in the country that supports racial quotas. So right of the bat conservatives are deliberately conflating affirmative action with racial quotas even though the two are entirely different concepts. Secondly, the first executive order Kennedy enacted as president in regards to Civil Rights was an affirmative action policy. That’s right Executive Order 10925 required that government contractors abide by affirmative action standards and prohibited discrimination based on race, religion, gender, creed, or nationality. The second executive order Kennedy enacted regarding Civil Rights, Executive Order 11063, was a similar policy regarding federal institutions. This executive order prohibited discrimination in federal housing.
Kennedy also created the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity which became the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which administers and enforces civil rights laws regarding workplace discrimination. President Kennedy had appointed his vice-president, Lyndon Johnson, to lead this commission. As president, Johnson would establish the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and appointed Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. as the first chair of the EEOC. The EEOC’s purpose is to investigate discrimination complaints based on an individual's race, religion, gender, nationality, sexuality, or disabilities. Since it’s implementation, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has proven to be very effective in handling discrimination cases. Kennedy also created the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women and appointed Elanor Roosevelt to lead this commission. This commission was created to investigation to investigate the treatment of women in the workplace. The commission found a massive pay disparity between men and women in the workplace. After this revelation emerged, Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law which aimed to abolish the wage gap between men and women. Sounds pretty conservative right. While there is still a wage gap today, that wage gap is significantly smaller today than it was prior to the passage of the Equal Pay Act. Conservatives pretend that the wage gap doesn’t exist whatsoever or try to justify why there is a wage gap.
John F. Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Thurgood Marshall became the first African American appointed to a federal court. Lyndon B. Johnson would appoint Marshall to the Supreme Court, and that made Thurgood Marshall the first African American to appointed to the Supreme Court. Prior to his assassination Kennedy had introduced the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act to Congress and urged Congress to pass those acts. Kennedy would give his famous Civil Rights Address as an effort to get the bill passed through Congress. Following Martin Luther King’s march on Washington and King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, Kennedy had pushed harder to get the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act passed. Prior to Kennedy’s death, the Civil Rights Act had passed through the House of Representatives and was introduced to the Senate. Kennedy died before the Civil Rights Act passed through the Senate, and then he could sign it. When Johnson became president, he signed the Civil Rights Act into law and then signed the Voting Rights Act into law when it finally passed through Congress. Martin Luther King praised Kennedy’s efforts and credited him and Johnson for the Civil Rights Act’s implementation. Ronald Reagan called the Voting Rights Act an insult to the south. Today’s Republicans have worked to circumvent particular parts of these acts. Republicans like former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach have actively engaged in forms of voter suppression that directly violate the Voting Rights Act. Conservatives also attack Article II of the Civil Rights Act which pertains to public accommodations and outlawed discrimination race, religion, gender, and nationality in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and other places of business. Conservatives attack Article II because they feel it is an overreach of government power, and they like businesses should be able to serve and not serve whoever they want. Yet, Conservative John F. Kennedy included Article II in the bill he proposed to Congress.
Progressives have in some cases critiqued Kennedy’s slowness on the issue of Civil Rights. However, progressives are fair to Kennedy and understand his worries about recreating the failures of the Reconstruction Era. Reverend Jesse Jackson called Kennedy a cautious pragmatic supporter of Civil Rights. Progressive do criticize Kennedy’s approval of Hoover’s wiretap of Dr. King but unlike many conservatives, progressives don’t smear Kennedy as a racist for that mistake. Progressives understand that Kennedy did more to help the Civil Rights Movement than hurt it. Progressives, much like Martin Luther King, realize that the Civil Rights Act might not have passed had Kennedy not fought to pass it before he died. Of course, it is important to know that John F. Kennedy’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy, was the driving force behind the Kennedy Administration’s Civil Rights policies. It was Bobby Kennedy that convinced Jack Kennedy to take a strong stand on the issue of Civil Rights during the 1960 election. The irony is that many conservatives who want to claim Kennedy as a conservative are the same conservatives who want to deny that the parties switched during the 1960s. The notion that Kennedy would be a Republican today contradicts the notion that today’s Republicans are still the party of Lincoln. If Kennedy’s ideas were mainstream in the Democratic Party at his time, then that means that the Republicans adopted mainstream Democratic ideas and therefore they are no longer the Party of Lincoln. At least the conservatives who smear Kennedy as a racist are consistent. Both bands of conservatives are dead wrong about Kennedy regardless.
MYTH #3: Kennedy was for Welfare Reform
This is just conservatives lying about Kennedy’s welfare policies. President Kennedy did reform welfare, by expanding welfare benefits and increasing government funding for welfare programs. What today’s Conservatives and Neoliberals mean by welfare reform is reducing welfare benefits and decreasing government funds for welfare programs. When President Bill Clinton did his welfare reform policies, he gutted welfare programs and cut welfare spending. Clinton wasn’t alone, he had the help of Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and the Republican-controlled Congress to achieve his version of welfare reform. The fact of the matter is that Kennedy and Clinton’s versions of welfare reform are radically different.
MYTH #4: Kennedy was a Catholic, therefore opposed the separation of church and state
This is just conservatives being intellectually dishonest about Kennedy’s views. They assume that because Kennedy was religiosu he opposed secularism. Of course, that’s because conservatives think that liberals and progressives hate religion and use secularism as a shield to ban religion. This is far from true. Also, Kennedy did believe in the separation of church and state. As a matter of fact, Kennedy thought secularism was important. If conservatives beg to differ they should take their arguments up to Rick Santorum.
MYTH #5: Kennedy supported Militarism
Much like Kennedy’s stance on racial issues, the right has spread two myths about Kennedy’s foreign policy. The first is spread by conservatives to paint Kennedy as a warmonger who instigated conflicts with Cuba and Vietnam. This is mostly done to save the legacy of Republican President Richard Nixon and to paint Nixon as a champion of peace. The second is spread by neoconservatives to claim Kennedy as one of their own, and claim that Kennedy understood the importance of America’s standing in the world. Neither of the claims made by conservatives and neoconservatives are true. First of all, John F. Kennedy was an advocate for peace. Kennedy had proposed a worldwide peace plan that would potentially eliminate the impending threat of a war with the Soviet Union. Look no further than Kennedy’s “Peace Speech.”
Of course, what conservatives point to as their evidence that Kennedy was a hawk is the Bay of Pigs. The Bay of Pigs was an invasion plan that was hatched by the CIA and the Eisenhower Administration to eliminate Fidel Castro. It was Vice-President Richard Nixon and CIA Director Allen Dulles plan, and it was hatched because Nixon had viewed Castro as a threat to the US. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had approved of the Bay of Pigs invasion plan shortly before leaving office and, Kennedy who did authorize the plan when he took office largely because Eisenhower and Dulles had advised him to. The plan had failed and that created a rift between Kennedy and the CIA. Allen Dulles had given Kennedy other plans to overthrow Castro, and Kennedy rejected all of them. One of those was Operation Mongoose which was a false flag operation to frame the Cuban government for massacring Cuban refugees. Kennedy went on to fire Dulles and proclaim that it was time to “break up the CIA and toss it toss the pieces to the wind.” Imagine what Nixon would’ve done in Kennedy’s position.
The Bay of Pigs helped set the stage for the Cuban Missile when the Soviet Union had allied with Cuba to store nuclear missiles in Cuba. Conservatives love to oversimplify the Cuban Missile Crisis and claim Kennedy had threatened Nikita Khrushchev with war and then Khrushchev backed down. However, it is more nuanced than that. On the surface that was the case, behind the scenes Kennedy and Khrushchev were seeking a diplomatic solution to the conflict. Kennedy and Khrushchev had reached an agreement on the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy agreed to withdraw US nuclear missiles in Turkey if Krushchev had agreed to withdraw missiles from Cuba. Kennedy solved the situation with diplomacy, not aggression. Kennedy and Khrushchev would later work together to pass the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (PNTB) banned all nuclear testing except underground testing. The PNTB Treaty was a significant milestone in the Cold War and helped lay the groundwork for future treaty such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
The next foreign policy endeavor that Conservatives use to paint Kennedy as a hawk is the Vietnam War. Conservatives will claim that Kennedy started the Vietnam War, which is just not true. It was Johnson, who lied about the Gulf of Tonkin so he Congress would give him the powers of a war-time president to authorize military strikes in Vietnam. Now if conservatives are talking about US military involvement in Vietnam prior to Gulf of Tonkin and say that was Kennedy, they’re still wrong. US military involvement in Vietnam started with Eisenhower, not Kennedy. As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes in his article “John F. Kennedy’s Vision of Peace” for Rolling Stone “ JFK inherited a deteriorative dilemma. When Eisenhower left office, there were by official count 685 military advisers in Vietnam, sent there to help the government of President Ngo Dinh Diem in its battle against the South Vietnamese guerrillas known as the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese soldiers deployed by Communist ruler Ho Chi Minh, who was intent on reunifying his country” (Kennedy). Yes, during Kennedy’s tenure as president he continued Eisenhower’s policies in Vietnam. Kennedy had only sent military advisors to Vietnam and refused to send combat troops to Vietnam. As Bobby Kennedy Jr. writes “For three years, that refusal to send combat troops earned him the antipathy of both liberals and conservatives who rebuked him for ‘throwing in the towel’ in the Cold War” (Kennedy). This shows Kennedy did continue Eisenhower’s policies in Vietnam, but he had no intentions of pursuing a war in Vietnam.
In fact, Kennedy did seek to find a way to withdraw from Vietnam as president and discontinue the Eisenhower Vietnam policy. In October of 1963, a month before Kennedy was killed, Kennedy had approved of a National Security Order to withdraw troops from Vietnam. The withdrawal was set to be fully completed in 1965. The order did successfully bring 1,000 troops home in 1963. However, following Kennedy’s death in 1963, Lyndon Johnson had reversed the order and then proceeded with a scorched earth policy in Vietnam. Then when Nixon came he escalated Johnson’s policies to new heights until the Pentagon Papers came out. The Pentagon Papers had exposed the lies about Vietnam and turned public opinion against the Vietnam War. That forced Nixon to order troop withdrawals so he could save his legacy. Of course, Nixon resigned before he could execute troop withdrawals, and Gerald Ford went on to pull troops from Vietnam.
Progressives have critiqued Kennedy's foreign policy, but much like his Civil Rights record, their critiques of him are light. Progressives mostly criticize Kennedy for authorizing the Bay of Pigs invasion plan. However, they tend to be evenhanded and criticize both Eisenhower and Kennedy, they don’t put the blame squarely on Kennedy. As for Vietnam, progressives only criticize Kennedy for continuing Eisenhower’s Vietnam policy. Progressives mostly attack Johnson and Nixon for the Vietnam debacle, they tend to be very light when criticizing Eisenhower and Kennedy for any military action in Vietnam. Progressives often wish that Kennedy had lived long enough to successfully withdraw troops from Vietnam.
MYTH #6: Kennedy was a member of the NRA, therefore he opposed Gun Control
This is the most bizarre myth about Kennedy that conservatives push. First of all, the NRA’s membership isn’t exclusively Republicans, there are Democratic NRA members. Also, the NRA doesn’t donate exclusively to Republican politicians either, there are Democrats who’ve received money from the NRA. Jim Webb is a Democrat who’s received money and an A rating from the NRA. Secondly, the NRA of Kennedy’s time was extremely different than the NRA that’s around today. In fact, the NRA supported the Gun Control Act of 1968. The NRA became what it is today in 1971, well after Kennedy died.
Why Do Conservatives Even Want to Claim Kennedy?
It is odd that conservatives have this fixation on trying to claim Kennedy is one of them. It would make more sense for conservatives to want to skew and distort the facts about Theodore Roosevelt or Dwight D. Eisenhower since they were actually Republicans. The only possible explanation to give is that there are so few popular conservative presidents in American history, that they feel obligated to rewrite history to make liberal and progressive presidents into conservative presidents. They already try to rewrite history by claim Reagan’s policies were good policies, why not stick to that. They also try to claim Abraham Lincoln as a conservative, so they can deflect the racism that has become synonymous with their movement and party. Of course, conservatives wave the confederate flag and push to abolish Lincoln era fiscal policies like the income tax. The only reason they chose John F. Kennedy might because he had such a short presidency but yet had an impactful presidency despite its length. Conservatives can point to a speech Kennedy gave about tax reform and that’s “Jack Kennedy pushing for tax cuts, he’d be a Republican.” They completely ignore the substance of the speech and ignore the reality of Kennedy’s tax policies as a whole. When conservatives are confronted with the fact that Kennedy proposed programs they want to abolish such as Medicare and Medicaid; they pivot to “that was Johnson, not Kennedy,” and completely ignore the fact that Kennedy campaigned on those programs and proposed them.
There is no denying that John F. Kennedy is one of America’s most popular presidents. Whether or not Kennedy deserves the praise he gets is a discussion for another day. In fact, the entire Kennedy family have become icons in American politics. Bobby Kennedy has become an icon to liberals and progressives. So much so that Bobby’s grandson Joseph P. Kennedy III was hand-picked by Democrats to rebut Trump’s state of the union address. Also, there was a push to draft Joe Kennedy III to run for president in 2020. However, Joe Kennedy III’s politics are significantly to the right of his grandfather and his great uncle’s politics. On top of that numerous books have been written about John F. Kennedy and the Kennedy family. Films have been made about the Kennedys. President Kennedy’s popularity largely stems from the fact that Kennedy was a good public speaker and had a bold vision for the country, but his life was taken way too soon. However, it is clear that President Kennedy’s popularity has gone to conservatives heads so much so that they want to claim Kennedy as their own. They know that they’d have a difficult task trying to claim Bobby Kennedy, so their goal is to try and claim Jack Kennedy instead. Much like every conservative myth, the myth that Kennedy was a conservative falls apart when facts are presented that don’t support their narrative.
The debate over Kennedy’s politics is a debate that shouldn't even be taking place. The debate should be around whether or not Kennedy had a positive impact on American society, not whether or not Kennedy was a liberal and/or progressive or a conservative. Kennedy called himself a proud liberal, and his policy agenda was a progressive agenda. Looking at the facts it shows that Kennedy was, in fact, a progressive or at least a liberal, not a conservative. That’s largely why progressives have grown to admire him and for good reasons. John F. Kennedy had a very bold vision for the country and he was forward-thinking in his New Frontier plan. Sure Kennedy had minimal success, but that’s largely because his presidency was shortlived. Many of the things Kennedy put on the table with the New Frontier were implemented by Lyndon Johnson in his Great Society plan. There is a long-standing debate on the left on who deserves more credit for policies such as Medicare and the Civil Rights Bill Johnson or Kennedy. Both sides of that debate have compelling cases to make. The best way to look at that is Kennedy proposed those plans and Johnson enacted them. Had Kennedy lived to serve a second term those policies might have still happened, but Vietnam more than likely would have looked different if Kennedy lived to serve a second term.
John F. Kennedy modeled his New Frontier off of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Honest conservatives are willing to accept facts like that and thus push back against conservatives who want to claim Kennedy as one of them. Those kinds of conservatives are willing to have the debate everyone should have over Kennedy’s policies, whether or not they were a good thing. That is where the discourse over Kennedy’s legacy should lie. Dishonest conservatives want to make Kennedy out to be one of them so they can claim one of America’s greatest presidents. There attempts to claim him fall flat. Some even suggest that Kennedy was killed because of his conservative views, but there efforts to expand on that fall flat. There are plenty of holes in the John F. Kennedy assassinations official story, and there are plenty of compelling theories as to why Kennedy was killed. One of the best cases was made in Thom Hartmann and Lamer Waldron’s book Legacy of Secrecy. However, none of the compelling arguments pertain to Kennedy being a conservative, most of them pertain to his willingness to stand up to the Military-Industrial Complex and the mafia. There’s plenty of healthy speculation on the Kennedy assassination to go around.
In conclusion, John F. Kennedy may have been one of America’s most impactful and popular presidents, his short-lived presidency left leeway for myths to spread about him. The myth that stands out as being demonstrably false is the myth that Kennedy was a conservative. However, Kennedy’s fiscal, domestic, and foreign policy paints a different picture of him. In actuality, Kennedy was a progressive with a bold vision for the country he lead. Tragically Kennedy didn’t live to see his vision become a reality. Kennedy had a mostly positive impact on American society, with a few downsides. Had Kennedy lived longer he could’ve been a far greater president than he already was. If conservatives want to claim John F. Kennedy then they better start supporting a 74% top marginal tax rate, expanding welfare, raising the minimum wage, universal healthcare, the separation of church and state, equality for all Americans, and peaceful solutions to world conflicts then they can claim Kennedy; as for right now he’s a progressive as far as anyone is concerned.
