Reply #12: Well, I'm reading Gary Wills's "The Kennedy Imprisonment."

[tomreedtoon]

It is a lot less dreamy, and a lot more practical, guide to the Kennedy legacy. It points out that the Kennedy's didn't push ideology much, because their other driving impulses - sex, family, image, charisma and power - got in the way.

Wills produced the "Nixon Watch" books, where he dissected Richard Nixon's Presidency down to the last moments, if you need to see his liberal credentials. In The Kennedy Imprisonment he points out that only Robert Kennedy escaped, and only partially, from the terrible impulses of his family. And the last surviving Kennedy in power has been a prisoner of those impulses, and has had all the sins of his brothers dumped upon his head.

I thought of this with the Commie-baiting in the above address - something JFK pushed to show he was as "tough" as any Republican, which helped ease our way into the mess of Vietnam.