Do we really want another JFK?

I just read commentator Ed Rollins' take on SNL's criticism of Barack Obama - surprisingly, the overall message wasn't "OH HOW COULD THEY?!" (it wasn't written for MSNBC).

It makes a good point: SNL, even now that it sucks, does and always has shaped perceptions of Presidents. Gerald Ford wasn't as clumsy as SNL would have us think, George H.W. Bush wasn't as goofy, and so on. Even Sarah Palin isn't as crazy or incompetent as Tina Fey made her out to be (I still am not a fan, but come on. I don't know if some of Palin's critics can tell the difference).

SNL's treatment of Obama is brutally honest: on a list of things that he said he would get done as quickly as possible, "Not Done" is the answer 8 months in. It suggests that he's not all he's cracked up to be, if not a standard misleading politician. Rollins points out some of the expectations people had for The One:

"Democrats are still hopeful this president will turn out to be the "Camelot II"; the new generational leader for whom they have waited decades and in some cases lifetimes. Many hope President Obama will be the new John Fitzgerald Kennedy..."

Is this really a comparison we want to be making? If I remember my American history correctly, John F. Kennedy was a downright lousy president. He made Bill Clinton look fanatically monogamous and George W. Bush look like a vigorous vetter of job qualifications.

George W. Bush didn't even have the balls to appoint a nuclear family member (or, nuculer if you wish) to cabinet-level high office. Though, at least Robert Kennedy was at least marginally qualified as Attorney General; Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense, wasn't at all qualified. In the documentary tell-all The Fog of War, McNamara recounts that he was first offered the job of Secretary of the Treasury by JFK, and when he insisted that he was in no way qualified for this, JFK's response was to make him Secretary of Defense.

His wandering penis was legendary, as well. To his credit, unlike Bill Clinton, he aimed high. He screwed Marylin Monroe, for chrissakes, while Bill Clinton, as George Carlin put it, "showed his dick to a government clerk."

As for his presidential track record, 1961 the Bay of Pigs fiasco stands out, as always. This was one of the biggest policy fuck-ups until Jimmy Carter's Iranian hostage rescue mission crashed and burned (literally) before it could even get out of the parking lot. And after training Cuban guerrillas on the CIA dole and sending them off in banana boats to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro, and then refusing them the needed air-support and logistical backing for it to actually work, it should have been no surprise when the USSR stationed nuclear fucking missiles in Cuba one year later.

By virtue of an incompetent but well-meaning US president and a not-crazy Soviet premier, the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved. And we give JFK most of the credit, probably because we felt bad after he was assassinated rather publicly and didn't have much of of a good presidential legacy to leave behind.

So, do Democrats want another JFK? I sure hope not. Only the most partisan of Republicans would want another presidency that overall lousy.