ask, which is did you have a meeting with everyone involved? did you ask all the questions? kennedy admitted he hadn t. in october 1962 when we came as close as we ever have to nuclear armageddon, what did he do? a 13-day running meeting where he deliberated the issues and came out on the other side of the most what was called the most dangerous hour in human history. he was learning how to do this. the tragedy of today is what we lost in the sense of a very bright man who understood history and wanted to make a difference. you know, ryan, we talk about the kennedy era as this sort of halcion, rosy time, when we had a functioning congress and we had this great leader who
recei recei rhetoricaly was learning the ropes on stage. his life tragically cut short, unsung hero on some things and probably overestimated on others. we talk about the dysfunction in congress that kennedy faced. i feel like it s almost a bomb to people like you and me who didn t know president kennedy and report and talk about the current political lan escape that we live in and how dysfunctional it is. really, america has been grappling with big issues for a long time. partisanship is not something new to the 21st century. he did one legislative thing right, which is worth mentioning in light of the filibuster reform yesterday, which is he basically changed the way the rules committee operates in the house leading up to 1960 so there wouldn t be this force of obstruction in the house which allowed him to get a bunch of his stuff through there. he was totally jammed up in the senate. his agenda was finished when he