Friday Night Fights: The Andrew Sullivan Vs Chris Matthews Smackdown

In a rather heated---and remarkable, considering it was on the usually vacuous Bill Maher show---exchange Friday night, Andrew Sullivan and JFK sycophant Chris Matthews engaged in this passionate exchange over JFK's legacy. The issue was JFK's predilection for a dovish or hawkish foreign policy. As evidence for his own hero worship, Matthews brought up the Cuban Missile Crisis, forever interpreted by the Left as proof of JFK's Godlike stature, after he single handily saved humanity and such. It seemed that Matthews got the better of the exchange, which is sad because Sullivan had the better argument. Kennedy's domestic critics thought him unprepared for the presidency, and called him "a callow playboy". There was one other man who shared this assessment, namely Nikita Khrushchev. Of Kennedy he said:

The man is very inexperienced, even immature. Compared to him Eisenhower is a man of intelligence and vision.

To say the least. A generation of mindless adulators have given JFK credit for something to which he is to blame. The Russians would not have dared to put missiles in Cuba had Eisenhower remained in office. Khrushchev thought Kennedy could be rolled, that he was weak and ineffectual, and that is why the world was taken to the brink of nuclear war. The lesson is that their is no substitute for experience when entering the White House, that we should not put people in their simply because they possess charm and a winning smile. Judging by our current occupant, we haven't learned this lesson yet.