[The] premise is that Kennedy was a very good president, and might have been a great one if he’d lived. Few serious historians take this view … In reality, the kindest interpretation of Kennedy’s presidency is that he was a mediocrity whose death left his final grade as “incomplete.” The harsher view would deem him a near disaster — ineffective in domestic policy, evasive on civil rights and a serial blunderer in foreign policy, who barely avoided a nuclear war that his own brinksmanship had pushed us toward ... We confuse charisma with competence, rhetoric with results, celebrity with genuine achievement.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "[The] premise is that Kennedy was a very good president, and might have been a great one if he’d lived. Few serious historians take this view … In reality, the kindest interpretation of Kennedy’s presidency is that he was a mediocrity whose death left his final grade as “incomplete.” The harsher view would deem him a near disaster — ineffective in domestic policy, evasive on civil rights and a serial blunderer in foreign policy, who barely avoided a nuclear war that his own brinksmanship had pushed us toward ... We confuse charisma with competence, rhetoric with results, celebrity with genuine achievement." in the context of "Ross Douthat The Enduring Cult of Kennedy, New York Times, November 26, 2011." to mean that wisdom is timeless.