Ross Douthat Rewrites History

I have, for the most part, tolerated Ross Douthat's presence on the New York Times' Op-Ed pages. One could easily do worse in the search for conservative "balance" to a paper's opinion section. And, between David Brooks' neverending search for goodness and mercy in all of us, and Bret Stephens' wholesale rejection of climate science, it has sometimes seemed as if worse was exactly what the Times was trying to do.  In any case, Douthat writes well, occasionally gives points to the other side, and has, for the most part, been fairly resolute in his status as a Never-Trumper.

But, like most Never-Trumpers on the right, Douthat can't quite resist the temptation to use this period of Republican dominance with which we have been cursed in an attempt to score a few unearned points for his side.  Even if it means using a little reverse hagiography in the process.

In this case, the subject of decanonization is John F. Kennedy.  In what appears to be a badly misguided effort to make Donald Trump's threats to incinerate North Korea seem, well, not-to-bad,
Douthat's column attempts to reconstruct the history of the Cuban Missile Crisis so that readers will believe that Kennedy was the real bad guy from start to finish.  His congenitally belligerent instincts, in Douthat's retelling, led him from slandering Richard Nixon to botching the Bay of Pigs invasion to placing Jupiter missiles in Turkey so that Nikita Khrushchev and the Soviet Union were all but begged to sail first-strike missiles over to Cuba.

There's just one problem with all of this.

It didn't happen that way.

The belligerence that led to those thirteen days in October of 1962 did not come from Kennedy.  It came, in fact, from Nixon and his anti-Commie fellow travellers in the early days of the modern conservative movement.  Kennedy, astute politician that he was, understood the need in the nuclear age to co-opt the "toughness" issue, and he did.  That was what led to the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and required (over Kennedy's better judgment) the decision to place the Jupiter missiles in Turkey. Neither the invasion nor the missiles were actions by Kennedy on his own; they were actions taken out of short-term political necessary in a climate he neither wanted nor created.

Somebody needs to send Douthat a copy of Robert F. Kennedy's "Thirteen Days"; it would improve his understanding of the history of this period.  It would also help him appreciate the Kennedy brothers' commitment to maintaining a respectful, truthful, even-keeled dialogue even with our seemingly most intractible enemies.  I have enough respect for Douthat to believe he can learn.  I despair of that ever happening with Trump.