This worked to LBJ’s favor allowing staff to focus on tailoring foreign response and policy, while he used his skills to influence congressional support for domestic issues. The legacy each president left are very different. JFK’s legacy begins and ends in the media, I believe that his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, showed his skills as a leader, and negotiator. His Berlin speech show that he was a skilled politician, and had no problem using his status as a young idealistic president as a means to influence world politics. Beyond these two points, the media image was what really stands out most, the use of term Camelot, Jackie and family playing in the White House and young John saluting his father’s casket as it passes him. JFK did introduce the civil rights bill of 1963; however, it was LBJs skills as a politician that pushed it through the congress. For years his presidency was connected to only Vietnam and campus unrest although he was instrumental in passing multiple bills and social programs that are still law, the Voting Rights, Economic Opportunity, Elementary and Secondary Education Acts and, Medicare and Medicaid, Head Start, …show more content…
and the USSR came very close to a conventional naval confrontation; however, the use of nuclear weapons were never a real option, the reason is each leader new that nuclear war would devastate each country and the leaders would be held responsible in histories eyes. I believe that Khrushchev realized that he had pushed Kennedy too hard during their first meeting and would probably not get away with a second time. Kennedy knew that he had to make a stand, therefore the naval quarantine would to provide a show of force while still allowing food and supplies thru to appease Castro and giving the Soviet Union an opportunity to back out while saving face. His other only other options were: concession, invasion, and a naval blockade with the authorization to conduct a naval attack on any Russian ship that did not comply. Historians have considered that the US Defense Condition (DEFCON), is a measure of how close nuclear conflict is and during the crisis it was DEFCON 2, the highest it has ever been; however, the DEFCON status also puts our military on notice or recall appropriate as the President had already deployed the Navy. Authorization to use nuclear weapons resided with the president and I do not believe that Kennedy considered this an option, based on his policy of flexible response. Khrushchev was not willing to start a war over a small island in an extremely unstable region (South America). The Cuban missile crisis led to