If it had not been for JFK, you’d be dead

Posted on December 8, 2002 in Pointers

Anthony Greeley is dead on: if JFK hadn’t been the man sitting in the Oval Office in October 1962, we’d all be dead now or never born.

Greeley’s responding to the chortles of conservative pundits who have been all too eager to jump on JFK because he concealed his Addison’s Disease. Greeley writes:

The prying eyes of the investigative media would have defeated John Kennedy — and Franklin Roosevelt, too, for that matter. A paralyzed polio victim and a man with Addison’s disease, both of them with records of marital infidelity, should never had made it to the White House. However, there is nothing to prevent the election of men who, like Nixon and Johnson, were emotional and psychological wrecks.

JFK had a sense of history. He remebered the lessons of World War 1 when military commanders pressed hard for and got a war whose technology was like nothing the world had seen before. Millions died in both the First and the Second World Wars because of the increased destructive capabilities which their users did not understand. In 1962, JFK and Khrushchev had the power to destroy the world. JFK saw the danger and said “No” to his officers.

Today, with a better educated military who warns us against an invasion in the Gulf, it’s the military who can’t say no to the president. George W. Bush appears to be in perfect health: it’s his mind which is suspect. The pools of urine accumulating on JFK’s grave at Arlington — a site where George W. Bush cannot be buried — will in time wash away in the rain if we’re given the opportunity to survive to the next century.

Greeley says it succinctly:

Think back to those 13 days in October before you make your decision to choose virtue over competence.