Biden vs Kennedy vs Nixon

Yesterday I started thinkng about Biden and Ukraine vis-a-vis Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis. I realize the circumstances are only very generally equivalent, but they do represent rare and potentially consequential direct confrontations betweeen the US and the Soviet Union or its successor. My conclusion yesterday was that in 1962, Khrushchev was a weak leader with backing that turned out to be unreliable, and he was badly played by Kennedy, who had speechwriters who'd studied Cicero in Catholic school, a highly effective media operation, and a telegenic persona. It didn't hurt that he lived with his family in London from 1938 to 1940 and saw Winston Churchill at close hand.

No matter there was a behind-the-scenes deal whereby the US removed missiles in Turkey that were an equivalent threat to the Soviets, that wasn't public, and Kennedy came off as the young, resolute, dynamic Leader of the Free World. From a domestic political standpoint, his handling of the crisis was a tour de force. Indeed, Khrushchev's performance was the opposite and led to his removal.

Let's look at Kennedy's television address to the nation on October 22, 1962. The first thing to note is its position in the timeline.

October 14, 1962: A U.S. U-2 spy plane piloted by Maj. Richard Heyser takes hundreds of photos of newly-built installations in the Cuban countryside. . .

October 15: CIA analysts spot launchers, missiles and transport trucks that indicate the Soviets are building sites to launch missiles capable of striking targets nearly across the United States. . .

October 16: President John F. Kennedy meets with a team of advisers known as Ex-Comm, to discuss how to respond to the missile threat. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara presents JFK with three options: diplomacy with Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, a naval quarantine of Cuba, and an air attack to destroy the missile sites, which might kill thousands of Soviet personnel and trigger a Soviet counterattack on a target such as Berlin.

Kennedy rejects the attack, and favors a quarantine to buy time to negotiate a missile withdrawal. JFK and his advisers are careful to call it a quarantine because a blockade is considered an act of war.

October 22: In a dramatic 18-minute television speech, JFK shocks Americans by revealing “unmistakable evidence” of the missile threat, and announces that the United States will prevent ships carrying weapons to reach Cuba, while demanding that the Soviets withdraw their missiles.

Meanwhile. U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union Foy Kohler delivers to a letter from JFK to Khrushchev. Kennedy writes: “the one thing that has most concerned me has been the possibility that your government would not correctly understand the will and determination of the United States in any given situation, since I have not assumed that you or any other sane man would, in this nuclear age, deliberately plunge the world into war which it is crystal clear no country could win and which could only result in catastrophic consequences to the whole world, including the aggressor.”

. . . October 28: Khrushchev concedes, writing an open letter to Kennedy saying that the Soviet missiles will be dismantled and removed from Cuba.

The Kennedy White House portrayed the withdrawal as the result of the president’s tough stance in the face of Soviet aggression. In reality, as Kornbluh says, “the resolution of the crisis owed to the president’s commitment to negotiate and find common ground in a dangerous nuclear world.”

Kennedy's television address was also rhetorically brilliant in itself, I would guess, again, because his staff was capable and had read Cicero.

The 1930's taught us a clear lesson: aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged ultimately leads to war. This nation is opposed to war. We are also true to our word. Our unswerving objective, therefore, must be to prevent the use of these missiles against this or any other country, and to secure their withdrawal or elimination from the Western Hemisphere.

Our policy has been one of patience and restraint, as befits a peaceful and powerful nation, which leads a worldwide alliance. We have been determined not to be diverted from our central concerns by mere irritants and fanatics. But now further action is required--and it is under way; and these actions may only be the beginning. We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth--but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced.

Acting, therefore, in the defense of our own security and of the entire Western Hemisphere, and under the authority entrusted to me by the Constitution as endorsed by the resolution of the Congress, I have directed that the following initial steps be taken immediately:

First: To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.

. . . The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are--but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world. The cost of freedom is always high--and Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.

Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right- -not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.

There are certainly echoes of Churchill here, and they're entirely appropriate. The problem right now is that the contrast with Biden couldn't be greater. The Ukraine crisis has been festering for weeks, and Biden's main contribution has been his stumbling remarks on January 19

President Joe Biden on Thursday sought to clarify his stance on a potential Russian incursion in Ukraine, cleaning up remarks from the prior day's news conference during which he suggested a "minor incursion" by Russia would elicit a lesser response than a full-scale invasion of the country.

"I've been absolutely clear with President Putin. He has no misunderstanding. If any -- any -- assembled Russian units move across Ukrainian border, that is an invasion. But it will be met with severe and coordinated economic response that I've discussed in detail with our allies, as well as laid out very clearly for President Putin,"

But it's plain that his response has been essentially panic, ordering embassy staff to be evacuated from Kyiv:

The European Union will not follow the US move to evacuate diplomatic staff and families, largely because the US hasn’t explained why we’re doing it. “We don’t have to dramatize,” EU foreign policy minister Josep Borrell told the press today as European nations met to determine their path forward in confronting Russia over the crisis in Ukraine.

Also,

A Ukrainian journalist asked State Department Spokesperson Ned Price why the U.S. was evacuating personnel in the capital city of Kyiv, which is 500 miles from the border with Russia, and whether that meant the capital was a target of invasion.

Ukraine and the EU are displaying far more calm and resolution than Biden, who has so far abdicated any pretensions at being the Leader of the Free World.

But I mentinied Nixon. Right now, Biden is looking much more like Nixon:

President Joe Biden broke his 2020 campaign promise Monday not to bully the news media when he called Fox News’ Peter Doocy a “stupid son of a bitch” on a hot mic in response to a question about inflation at the White House.

Doocy took the insult in stride, later joking that no one had “fact checked” the president’s claim. On Fox News’ Hannity, Doocy revealed that the president had called him to tell him the insult was not “personal,” though he stopped short of saying that Biden had apologized.

Biden’s insult was only the latest example of an irascible attitude toward the press that has dogged him throughout his media career. Last week, for example, he snapped at a reporter during a press conference: “I assume you got into journalism because you liked to write.

Journalist Daniel Schorr was number 17 on Nixon's enemies list, and early in the Nixon administration

he angered the President by reporting, accurately, that there was no evidence to support Nixon's claim that he had programs ready to aid parochial schools. His reward: Nixon ordered the FBI to investigate him.

All politics is domestic, which Kennedy understood. This is not a good sign.