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The difference between reactions to the Kennedy legend and the Johnson performance is even more dramatic abroad than at home. Johnson is regularly described by foreign left-wingers as a "man of blood" or a "cowboy murderer" or a "Texas assassin," who has "turned Viet Nam into a slaughterhouse." A middle-reading Athens journalist accuses Johnson of "blatant Goldwaterism." When it is pointed out that, had he lived, Kennedy would have had to make many of the same moves as Johnson, most foreign critics insist that he would have handled them differently, with more finesse. They concede that Johnson is brilliant in domestic affairs, though they don't really care much about that, but insist that he is heavy-handed or simply not interested in foreign affairs, particularly as regards Europe.
But the dislike goes beyond rational, or even irrational, argument. Some of it is purely visceral. "I don't know why," says an Ethiopian observer, "but I cannot stand to look at his picture." Says a Turkish businessman, even while trying to display his pro-American sentiments: "Just because Johnson is a boob does not mean that all Americans are boobs." A Tokyo political scientist can find only one word to define Johnson: shominteki—meaning pedestrian or commonplace.
Kennedy, on the other hand, is described by Japanese Novelist Yukio Mishima as "the shining prince of the Genji tradition, a man with strategy in his mind and poetry in his heart." The USIS film Years of Lightning, Day of Drums is the biggest hit in Congolese box-office history; West African damsels wear dresses with the portrait of J.F.K. printed on the fabric, and underlined by the caption: "Africa Will Not Forget You." One of Johnson's few African solaces is the fact that a Congolese group wrote to the U.S. embassy requesting permission to name a Boy Scout troop after L.B.J.
In Ireland, Brendan Corish, leader of the Labor Party, credits Kennedy with leading the world into forming "the Trinity of Peace, with Pope John XXIII and Khrushchev." In the past three months, major Italian magazines have carried nine cover stories either on Jack or some other Kennedy, and only one on Johnson. Says Author-Politician Luigi Barzini (The Italians): "Kennedy has attained a superman stature in Italian eyes. He was the man of hope, the man who could have done anything. He was the man who could have brought lasting peace to the entire world."