President John F. Kennedy

[Victoria O'Keefe]

President Kennedy saved the world from nuclear war when the generals were screaming at him to launch on the USSR. If, anything, JFK is an UNDERRATED president.

[George 1978]

I knew someone in the United States who was born in 1963, and for obvious reasons, has no memory of the President of the United States on the day he was born being alive. I have no memory of Jimmy Carter being President, but that is ironic because Carter was in the White House on the day I was born - and he is still with us, four and a half decades on! How many people in their mid 40s can say that the President of the United States on the day they were born is still alive? He was only seven years younger than Kennedy.

Not many.

[Victoria O'Keefe]

To put the longevity of Jimmy Carter’s post-Presidency into context, think about this: at the end of Abraham Lincoln’s first term in 1865, he was the same age as Carter was when he left office in 1981 – 56 years old. If Lincoln had retired at the end of his first term and enjoyed the same length of a post-Presidency that Carter has, Lincoln’s retirement would have stretched into the second term of Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.

Or how about this one: if John F. Kennedy had served two full terms as President and had a post-Presidency as long as Jimmy Carter’s, JFK would have been enjoying retirement during the first term of Barack Obama in 2010. And in 2010, JFK would have been 5 years younger than Jimmy Carter is today!

[Richard1978]

Herbert Hoover lived until 1964, after being president from 1928 to 1932, which was possibly a record at the time for how long a president had lived after leaving office.

[Victoria O'Keefe]

Hoover left office on March 4, 1933 and died in late 1964, yeah.

[Richard1978]

Hoover left office on March 4, 1933 and died in late 1964, yeah.

The gap between the election & the start of the a new Presidential term was longer then.

[Victoria O'Keefe]

20th Amendment. the handover became January 20 in 1937 (FDR's second Inauguration Day)

[Semi42]

100% Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy , if you go down the rabbit hole of researching this fascinating subject , you’ll be convinced

[Victoria O'Keefe]

MKULTRA etc. - a lot of people in his own government saw Kennedy as a threat to their illegal ****

[George 1978]

Herbert Hoover lived until 1964, after being president from 1928 to 1932, which was possibly a record at the time for how long a president had lived after leaving office.

Amazing that Hoover outlived Kennedy - pity that his vacuum namesakes don't have a very long life...

[Victoria O'Keefe]

"The 37th President of the United States, 50-year-old Richard Nixon, had arrived in Dallas on November 20th for a conference of the American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages on behalf of Pepsi-Cola, a company that his New York law firm was representing. On November 21st, Nixon sat down with reporters in his room at the Baker Hotel, where he criticized many of the policies of President Kennedy, his 1960 opponent, who would be arriving in Dallas the next day. That night, Nixon and Pepsi executives including actress Joan Crawford, who had been married to Pepsi’s chairman, Alfred Steele, until his death in 1959, were entertained at the Statler Hilton.

In the early morning of November 22nd, a car dropped Nixon off, alone, at Love Field, the Dallas airport that would host President and Mrs. Kennedy, Vice President Johnson and Mrs. Johnson, and Texas Governor John Connally and his wife in just a few hours. Nixon later remembered the flags and signs displayed along the motorcade route that Kennedy would soon follow. Nixon approached the American Airlines ticket counter to check-in for his flight to New York City and told the attendant, “It looks like you’re going to have a big day today”.

Nixon landed several hours later in New York at an airport that would be renamed after John F. Kennedy a month later. He described what happened next in his 1978 autobiography, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon:

Arriving in New York, I hailed a cab home. We drove through Queens toward the 59th Street Bridge, and as we stopped at a traffic light, a man rushed over from the curb and started talking to the driver. I heard him say, “Do you have a radio in your cab? I just heard that Kennedy was shot.“ We had no radio, and as we continued into Manhattan a hundred thoughts rushed through my mind. The man could have been crazy or a macabre prankster. He could have been mistaken about what he had heard; or perhaps a gunman might have shot at Kennedy but missed or only wounded him. I refused to believe that he could have been killed.
As the cab drew up in front of my building, the doorman ran out. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. "Oh, Mr. Nixon, have you heard, sir?” he asked. “It’s just terrible. They’ve killed President Kennedy.”

The close 1960 Presidential election changed the relationship between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, but they had once been very close. When they first entered Congress together in 1947, they considered each other personal friends, and when Nixon ran for the Senate from California in 1950, JFK stopped into Nixon’s office and dropped off a financial contribution to Nixon’s campaign from Kennedy’s father. Nixon would later write that he felt as bad on the night of Kennedy’s assassination as he had when he lost two brothers to tuberculosis when he was very young. That night, he wrote an emotional letter to Jacqueline Kennedy:

Dear Jackie,
In this tragic hour Pat and I want you to know that our thoughts and prayers are with you.
While the hand of fate made Jack and me political opponents I always cherished the fact that we were personal friends from the time we came to the Congress together in 1947. That friendship evidenced itself in many ways including the invitation we received to attend your wedding.
Nothing I could say now could add to the splendid tributes which have come from throughout the world to him.
But I want you to know that the nation will also be forever grateful for your service as First Lady. You brought to the White House charm, beauty and elegance as the official hostess of America, and the mystique of the young in heart which was uniquely yours made an indelible impression on the American consciousness.
If in the days ahead we could be helpful in any way we shall be honored to be at your command.
Sincerely,
Dick Nixon"

[beccabear67]

I can't see JFK as underrated what with all that Camelot golden era type stuff that has been written about his sadly brief presidency. Obviously his murder was a huge event and adds to the feelings of loss, followed by Robert's murder almost five years later (which I find stranger than the Dallas sniper situation).

I would say Stanley Baldwin is the most underrated UK PM... not sure about the U.S., perhaps Eisenhower?

[Victoria O'Keefe]

If RFK's killer wanted to help the Palestinian Arabs, killing Kennedy was the worst thing he could have done.

[Victoria O'Keefe]

I watched a newish film called JFK it was good,he should have been in a bullet proof car and not an open top

The Secret Service thought so too but Jack overruled them.

[George 1978]

Sincerely,
Dick Nixon"

Why do I find him being called "Dick Nixon" amusing?

Was he ever called Dick officially? I thought he was always called Richard.