I had no idea that there were tapes of Kennedy discussing Vietnam.

[NNadir]

John F. Kennedy was my least favorite, with the possible exception of the overtly racist Woodrow Wilson, Democratic President of the 20th century.

To my mind he doesn't measure up to FDR, of course, but not even to Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, or Jimmy Carter (in that order).

Much of the public, and many historians, I'm sure would not agree with me, but it's just my opinion.

Looking over the line up on CSPAN history this coming weekend, I came across a lecture by Professor Marc Selverstone in which he will discuss the Kennedy Tapes on Vietnam.

Again, I didn't know that such tapes existed.

Apparently Professor Selverstone appeared on CSPAN back in 2013 discussing these tapes, and I checked it out. (Some of the tapes are played, including many of the players who stayed on for the Johnson Administration.)

The 2013 discussion, an interview, is here:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?315600-1/kennedy-vietnam-tapes

I am not among those who think that Kennedy would have really found a way to "get out of Vietnam" but he was discussing it, but I'm not sure he would have actually done it as events unfolded. He was assassinated only a few weeks after Diem was, but there is, in one excerpt, made to a Dictaphone when he was alone, when he muses on his own culpability and that of his administration in Diem's assassination.