Kennedy was and is extremely popular among Americans.
Popularity is no measure of how a politician's policies actually effect his/her constituents. It is only a measure of how good his/her damage control team is, how honest he/she is able to appear. Kennedy derived his popularity from shamelessly touting the archetype of progress, appealing to young people even though he was in his forties, and having an attractive wife. His actual positions had very little to do with his popularity, much as Obama's actual positions have very little to do with
his popularity.
Civil rights did progress a great deal under his leadership.
He did everything he could to
derail civil rights. I refer you to Malcolm X: "It was the grass roots out there in the street. It scared the...white power structure in Washington D.C. to death; I was there. When they found out that this black steamroller was going to come down on the capitol, they called in...these national Negro leaders that you respect and told them 'Call it off,' Kennedy said. 'Look, you all are letting this thing go too far.' And Old Tom said, 'Boss, I can't stop it because I didn't start it.' I'm telling you what they said. They said 'I'm not even in it, much less at the head of it.' They said, 'These Negroes are doing things on their own. They're running ahead of us.' And that shrewd old fox, he said, 'If you all aren't in it, I'll put you in it. I'll put you at the head of it. I'll endorse it. I'll welcome it. I'll help it. I'll join it.
...It was a takeover. They controlled it so tight, they told those Negroes what time to hit town, where to stop, what signs to carry, what song to sing, what speech they could make, and what speech they couldn't make, and then told them to get out of town by sundown." Furthermore, Kennedy was far more cautious than Johnson when it came to appeasing the Southern democrats.
As I recall, Cuba was a setup. I can't blame the man for that one.
Well, if I may be blunt, you're wrong. It's quite true that the CIA had planned the coup during the Eisenhower administration, but Eisenhower had deliberately left it on his desk, untouched, for the next President. Kennedy was not locked into anything. It was his decision to make whether to invade Cuba or not, and he made it. Indeed, he took full responsibility for it on national television.
The Vietnam War started far before Kennedy took office, but he did increase the number of troops sent over by a large amount - the military bigwigs were insisting that they needed far more troops if they were to accomplish anything there. That could conceivably be considered equal to starting the war, since it in effect made it a great deal more serious. He was planning to end the war shortly after his assumed re-election, but was assassinated before that happened.
Way to make my point. Kennedy escalated the war far beyond any levels that Eisenhower had contemplated. And the buck cannot be passed to the "military bigwigs." Kennedy was perfectly free to make any choice he wanted to, unrestricted by a compliant Congress and in the absence of a War Powers Act. As with Cuba, the decision to escalate in Vietnam can be laid entirely at Kennedy's feet. As for the plans to end the war after his re-election, the documentation for that is flimsy at best, and promises meant to be kept after elections are, as we have seen many times, easily broken.
