John F. Kennedy s Anti Rhetoric - 1388 Words

It’s hard to know exactly when the Republican Party assumed the mantle of the â€Å"stupid party.† Stupidity is not an accusation that could be hurled against such prominent early Republicans as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root and Charles Evans Hughes. But by the 1950s, it had become an established shibboleth that the â€Å"eggheads† were for Adlai Stevenson and the â€Å"boobs† for Dwight D. Eisenhower — a view endorsed by Richard Hofstadter’s 1963 book â€Å"Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,† which contrasted Stevenson, â€Å"a politician of uncommon mind and style, whose appeal to intellectuals overshadowed anything in recent history,† with Eisenhower — â€Å"conventional in mind, relatively inarticulate.† The John F. Kennedy presidency, with†¦show more content†¦Buckley Jr. famously said, â€Å"I should sooner live in a society governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the 2,000 faculty members of Harvard University.† More recentl y, George W. Bush joked at a Yale commencement: â€Å"To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say, well done. And to the C students I say, you, too, can be president of the United States.† Many Democrats took all this at face value and congratulated themselves for being smarter than the benighted Republicans. Here’s the thing, though: The Republican embrace of anti-intellectualism was, to a large extent, a put-on. At least until now. Eisenhower may have played the part of an amiable duffer, but he may have been the best prepared president we have ever had — a five-star general with an unparalleled knowledge of national security affairs. When he resorted to gobbledygook in public, it was in order to preserve his political room to maneuver. Reagan may have come across as a dumb thespian, but he spent decades honing his views on public policy and writing his own speeches. Nixon may have burned with resentment of â€Å"Harvard men,† but he turned over foreign policy and domestic policy to two Harvard professors, Henry A. Kissinger and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, while his own knowledge of foreign affairs was second only to Ike’s. There is no evidence that Republican leaders have been