Ira Stoll's goal in this book is to argue that John F. Kennedy — long a liberal icon — was actually a conservative. To do this, he chronicles Kennedy's career, highlighting the speeches given and policies advocated which supposedly reflect his true conservative beliefs. Yet this proves to be little more than an exercise in sophistry — and an unconvincing one at that.

Though seeking to claim Kennedy as a conservative, Stoll refuses to define what he means by "conservatism", arguing that the "shifting definitions of the terms over time" make such an effort futile. Instead he depicts Kennedy as a conservative by virtue of being a devout Catholic and anticommunist who opposed union corruption and cut taxes — a conceit which presumes that liberals couldn't be these things, when in fact many were. Moreover, Stoll fails to address Kennedy's own repeated self-identification as a liberal, as well as the attacks leveled on Kennedy by his conservative contemporaries. Failing to acknowledge these only highlights the weaknesses in his argument, which will only convince readers who want to believe that the man who once declared that he was "proud to be a liberal" was anything but. ( )

Surprisingly, the archetypical liberal of the 1960s is a conservative.

Stoll has picked through the life and career of JFK to make the following conclusion: despite what he sometimes said, Kennedy was more conservative than his five-decade-old aura would have us believe. Stoll makes, I think, a good case that JFK was religious, quite anti-communist, pro-business, and hawkish when it came to foreign policy. You can call these things "conservative" because Democrats (today and then) are often dismissive of religion, anti-anti-communist (if not fellow-traveler Fabians), suspicious of business, and "dovish" appeasers (who would've lost the cold war, if you read what Ted Kennedy was up to in the 1980s). But Stoll lightly skips over and downplays the ways in which JFK was a liberal Democrat. (For instance, true he wanted to drop the top tax rate, but only to 70%!) He spent money on an array of social programs from old FDR New Deal schemes to ones that were forerunners to LBJ's Great Society. I could just as easily (and I bet there is someone doing it) write a book called "JFK, Liberal."

I remember, a decade or more ago, seeing Chris Matthews (back when he was mostly sane) saying that JFK was a hero because he gave his life for the country. Well, that's stupid. By that standard, James Garfield was a hero. (Quick, name anything President Garfield did.) It's hard to fight such an aura. What Stoll is good at is showing how the liberals around JFK, liberals he did not always agree with, shaped his post-assassination legacy. Sorensen and Schlesinger, the most egregious examples, trumpeting a speech late in his presidency to make it seem as if JFK was a peacenik: "Let us reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union... ...we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air." Etc. But they forget this line from the same speech: "As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity... The Communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today." Hardly the peace-loving person liberals would love today, some of whom do blame America for post-1945 tensions around the globe (still). What's worse, in books by Sorensen and Schlesinger, they have the (truncated) "Let us reexamine speech" come AFTER JFK's hawkish "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, when, in fact, the hawkish speech came after the "dovish" one.

So, Stoll has, I believe, not proven that JFK was a conservative (in the modern sense of the term), but that he was NOT a sheepish-progressive-ivorytower-liberal of the kind that inhabits today's university campuses and thinks the US is the locus of evil in history. I get angry when liberals today say that Ronald Reagan wouldn't be considered a conservative by today's standards; I get angry because they cherry-pick their evidence. I can see here that Stoll can be accused of doing the same.

So, I recommend, but get it cheaply. ( )

When I selected "JFK: Conservative," by Ira Stoll, I was hoping for a fresh perspective on the 35th president of the United States and his political legacy. Stoll does a decent job of recapping much of JFK's political life and rise to the presidency. He sets the scene for Kennedy's political rise by beginning with his July 4, 1946 speech at Fanueil Hall in Boston in which JFK, on the Independence Day after the ending of World War II framed American freedom as having a "deep religious sense," and warned of American secularism, perhaps, foreshadowing the Communist Red scare of the 1950's.

Stoll then begins to tell a selectively redacted version of JFK's political views emphasizing centrist statements he made in the 1950's like "I am not a liberal" when describing certain aspects of his views on the economy or taxes or foreign policy, for instance. Stoll gives cursory treatment of some other JFK biographers like Garry Wills, and Robert Dallek and Robert Bradlee then leans heavily on memoirs of two Kennedy administration officials, Ted Sorenson and Arthur Schleisinger, Jr., both of whom authored acclaimed biographies of Kennedy.

Stoll's re-telling of the PT-109 story and JFK's heroism is stirring and deeply moving. Stoll's observation of how Kennedy used this story to advance his political ambitions as well as how most of his political appointees served in the military during WWII are both apt and well articulated. He breaks little new ground in this account, however, primarily rehashing earlier accounts about JFK's political rise, while selectively cherry-picking quotes and facts to support his agenda of claiming JFK's legacy, at least in part, for conservatives.

A prime example of this sort of cherry-picking would be his selectively quoting Ted Sorenson when he supports his cause, then trashing him later when he does not. Early in the book, Stoll quotes Sorenson's response to JFK's "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," that iconic line from his inaugural address, suggesting JFK included that line because it had resonated with conservatives "who were weary of government handouts."

Stoll also, conveniently finds the Sorenson and Schleisinger accounts useful when they mention other conservative aspects of JFK's policy, like his tax policy, opposition to corruption in organized labor, or military expansionism, as well as leaning heavily on them for telling the story of JFK's political life. Yet, on matters Kennedy's policy stances and views that were arguably more liberal, like his "New Frontier" initiative to address the space race, poverty and prejudice, he dismisses and even patronizingly insults Sorenson and Schleisinger's accounts as "specious" in their seemingly blind advocacy for their "liberal agenda." Of Sorenson Stoll writes later in the book that in his memoir, he "rewrote the president's story in a way consonant with Sorenson's own dovish views" on matters of the military interventionism and international policy. Stoll also, oddly, ascribes great importance to the order Sorenson and Schleisinger recount JFK's famous Berlin and American University speeches writing that "reversing the chronology of the Berlin and American University speeches" was "...a specious way of advancing the liberal interpretive line being put forth by the presidential aides-turned-authors."

Stoll also offers a deeply flawed, arguably deliberately misleading portrayal of JFK's tax policy. Yes, John F. Kennedy was a strong proponent of cutting taxes and fought for tax cuts throughout his administration. What Stoll fails to accurately portray, however is the political backdrop and tax policy in Washington in the late 1950s and early 1960s. When Kennedy took office in 1961, Democrats had a 65-35 majority in the U.S. Senate, and 264-173 majority in the House of Representatives. Tax rates at that time were very high, particularly for the top income bracket, which, at the time, had a top marginal tax rate of 91%. JFK proposed cutting that top rate to 65%, as part of a tax reform package from which the bottom 85% of wage earners received 59% of the tax breaks. The highest marginal income tax rate in 2012 was 37.9%. These are all important contextual details which Stoll fails to even mention. Stoll would seem to rather go along with the misleading claims of conservative pundits like Bill O'Reilly who try to claim the Kennedy tax cuts as an example of conservatism for stimulating economic growth through cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans. This position is simply not borne out by the facts of history or economics.

Perhaps the most poignant and moving section in Stoll's biography of JFK is his treatment of the civil rights struggle. He recounts how Kennedy had called Martin Luther King, Jr. while he was in jail to express his support, and how later he had hosted the family of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers at the White House. Yet he also mentions JFK's opposition to the Freedom Riders' mission, disdain for March on Washington organizer Bayard Rustin, and even the possibility that the Kennedy administration supported CIA involvement with the South African apartheid government in capturing and imprisioning Nelson Mandela.

He then, interestingly, contrasts Kennedy's administration and policies with Nixon, pointing out that Nixon was more liberal than JFK and most other presidents since him on environmental regulation, public housing, healthcare and social security, which have since become the anathema of Republicans. Stoll then goes on to draw comparisons and similarities between the JFK and Reagan presidencies, emphasizing fiscal policy, military interventionism and taxes. Stoll selectively overlooks a lot of crucial differences between Reagan and JFK, however. JFK's tax cuts primarily benefited the American middle class.

Following Reagan's 1981 tax cut unemployment rose to 9.2% and the economy continued to languish for many months. Reagan also raised taxes 11 times and raised the debt ceiling 18 times. Civil rights is another big difference between them- JFK was concerned about keeping up appearances with white voters but he supported the black civil rights cause, and his efforts arguably were a major contributing factor leading to the civil rights act of 1964. Reagan, on the other hand, chose race baiting by advancing racially motivated stereotypes like his infamous "Welfare Queen" in order to stir up support from white middle class voters.

In the final section addressing JFK's legacy, even Stoll admits JFK was a centrist and pragmatist, writing that "one might suggest that the fact Kennedy has been claimed by both Republican and Democratic presidents...shows he was a centrist rather than a conservative." A better, more accurate title for this book would be "JFK: Centrist," but Stoll, instead chooses to give a very uncritical endorsement to some dubious claims about JFK's legacy by the conservative establishment, while disparaging acclaimed biographers and contemporaries of JFK as "specious" and of "advancing the liberal interpretive line." These sort of backhanded cheap shots come off as hypocritical and disingenuous given the fact that he relies heavily on the same sources he later disparages when it suits him. His writing about JFK's involvement with civil rights makes the book worth reading, but other than that this book contains many inaccuracies, unchallenged assumptions and dubious claims about the legacy of the 35th president of the United States. ( )

Stoll shows that JFK was basically a conservative during his whole political career; he was to the right of Lodge in the 1952 Senate race and to the right of Nixon in the 1960 presidential race. Stoll discusses in detail JFK's administration giving specifics; he describes JFK's greatly increased spending on the military, his anti-communism and his economic policies (including cutting taxes); JFK gave much lower priority to civil rights, etc. Stoll discusses Kennedy's administration by broad categories instead of following the chronological approach, and tends to get bogged down in details.

Stoll claims that JFK's associates were more liberal than he was and following JFK's death, both Sorensen and Schlesinger portrayed JFK as more liberal than he actually was; their books about JFK are inaccurate in this respect. In the last chapter of JFK, Conservative Stoll briefly describes how all the presidents who followed JFK tried to tie their presidencies with his. This is a shorter and, in my opinion, much less interesting book than The Kennedy Half Century by Larry J. Sabato, who also describes Kennedy's conservatism. ( )