This is a small thought, but I figured I’d pass it along. The toughest Cold Warriors, as a group, were the Catholics. Catholics were the only group overrepresented in Vietnam demographically. Contrary to a popular myth which was presumably created to get votes for post-radicalization Democrats, blacks died there in the same ratios as they lived in America.
Kennedy was a social liberal, but he was Catholic. I have to wonder if he got elected by appealing to the Catholics, who otherwise would have put Nixon in office. As some will recall, the race was in any event roughly as close as that between Al Gore and George Bush, with the notable difference that Nixon wasn’t a crybaby, and who promptly conceded.
Kennedy, like FDR, was not very bright, but he had a talent for speeches. The damage he did this nation was largely as a result of enabling LBJ to get into the White House, and begin a “war” we are waging to this very day, and losing: the “War on Poverty”.