Was JFK beginning to "Go Economic Populist" AROUND the state Dems in 1963 into '64 Campaign?

[Albert Rossi]

On economics, Kennedy was more of a pragmatist than an ideologue, though after the steel crisis it's obvious he didn't think much of big business.

If you haven't read Donald Gibson's Battling Wall Street, I recommend it. The basic thesis of the book is that JFK's economic policies were resisted by what we call today the 1% because they sought to achieve a form of wealth redistribution through tax structure and increased productivity. It was this interventionism which was criticized so severely by Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, and the Morgan/Rockefeller interests. JFK was not "anti-business", as Tracy states, in any ideological way, but was concerned about the economic commonwealth, about spreading the benefits of production throughout society, and with preventing the bleeding of productive capital into speculation and the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. Gibson makes a good case for seeing his economic and foreign policy views (on the Third World) as of a piece. Gibson also states (I think correctly) that the steel crisis was staged to place JFK's policies under a generalized attack and to weaken his efficacy. It was not really all that much about the immediate profit to be gleaned by U.S. Steel from the price hike. One of the points he makes here is that the steel producers and unions were in negotiation for over a year; the timing of this rejection, after the fact, bespeaks a subtler, clandestine agenda.

I know this is slightly askew from the original question of JFK's populism, but I thought I'd inject it here. I think JFK was willing to experiment with any means that would broaden his ability to achieve the kind of consensus he thought was important. Tracy is spot on to mention the Test Ban Treaty in that respect.