Talk:Presidential transition of John F. Kennedy/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Muboshgu (talk · contribs) 03:01, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi there. This topic seems interesting. I'll read through it tomorrow and provide comments. – Muboshgu (talk) 03:01, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Lead and infobox

• Kennedy should be linked in the infobox
• The lead is too short. For an article of this length, I do believe three paragraphs is appropriate. Summarize other key results of the transition for a third paragraph.
• The lead mentions Clifford but not Neustadt. Same with the infobox.

Pre-election actions

• There is no mention of the background here. We shouldn't assume the reader has come from 1960 United States presidential election, so please add a sentence (or two) on the election, perhaps mention Eisenhower being term limited.
• Link Kennedy, all terms should be linked on the first use in the body, in addition to the lead
• Clifford and Neustadt were both in charge, what were their tasks/responsibilities?
• Don't include Clifford's first name in the second paragraph
• the White House of incumbent president Dwight D. Eisenhower In this sense, "White House" is being used colloquially, and I think it should be made clear you're talking about the Eisenhower administration. Also, some MOS:JOBTITLES work is needed in this article. This is an occasion where the job title should be capitalized. There are other instances of this in other sections that need to be addressed, but I won't call each one out individually
• Any specifics on the time frames of when Clifford and Neustadt were put in charge, when the Brookings Institution was doing its peer review?
• Summer of 1960 please see MOS:SEASONS
• Also, I am not a fan of one-sentence paragraphs. Please merge them throughout.

Official transition

• Don't need Eisenhower's first name (or middle initial) here
• One of them to briefly congratulate the president-elect, and a second in which he promised to cooperate on an orderly transfer of power, and gave proposals on how to proceed with one. This is not a proper sentence, it could be an addition to the previous sentence or it needs a rewrite
• January 20th proper date format is "January 20".
• He also named his White House Chief of Staff Wilton Persons as his administration's representative for the transition Needs commas around the name, or other grammatical changes. That'll take care of the mini WP:SEAOFBLUE.
• they went over the three separate memos the previous section referred to them as "reports", and I think this should be consistent terminology.

Organization of the transition effort

• United States presidential transitions were far smaller and more informal at the time Kennedy was elected than they later developed to be. The problem with this sentence is the lack of context on how transitions are now. Can we just say they were informal, and what their size was specifically?
• Clark Clifford shouldn't be linked here, or have his first name used
• Any use of "City, State" requires a comma after it (re: Palm Beach, its done properly after Hyannis Port, MA)
• There's some redundancy in the info on transition HQ and meeting spaces. You mention Georgetown twice. Condense, and remove dup link for the Brookings Instution and the MOS:SCAREQUOTES.
• Pierre Salinger was assigned head of the transition's press team (press secretary) I think "to be" or something like that is missing in between "assigned head". Also, the parenthetical isn't grammatical. Is it better to have parentheticals like Sargent Shriver (Kennedy's brother-in-law) rather than wrapping the descriptors in commas?
• Ted Kennedy needs commas.
• Also involved in the transition would be James E. Webb. Awkward sentence construction. Also the use of "would" for something in the past is a pet peeve: see WP:INTOTHEWOULDS.
• DNC abbreviation is used but wasn't introduced after Democratic National Committee earlier in the section. And it's spelled out twice and then the abbreviation is used the third time.

Actions of transition head Clark Clifford

• On November 14, transition head Clifford remove "transition head"
• met at the White House with Wilton Persons --> "met with Persons at the White House"
• Missing punctuation after outgoing president

Intelligence briefings for the president-elect

• Spell out CIA
• including some delivered directly from Allen Dulles and Richard M. Bissell Jr give their titles
• Did he have any CIA briefings before November 14, or did they only start after? Wording is unclear to me.
• covert plans against Fidel Castro of Cuba should probably say more, as in coup or assassination, and more on who Fidel was and why the U.S. would want to do anything
• Neustadt's given name is given again in the third paragraph

Eisenhower's role in transition

• Anything we could say about why Eisenhower and JFK "thought ill" of each other?
• The date in the photo caption needs a comma after "1960"

Other developments

• Remove the link to previously linked Palm Beach, Florida, and Nixon. The info on who Nixon is will be better placed in the pre-election background.
• This section suffers from too much WP:PROSELINE: "On Day X, Y happened". Please try to mix up wording choices, merge paragraphs, etc.
• This meeting had been arranged with the assistance of Kennedy's father Joseph P. Kennedy and former president Hoover. Commas are needed around JPK, and also MOS:JOBTITLES
• It's odd that JFK Jr's birth is mentioned here when it was already mentioned in the previous section with more transition context (Eisenhower breaking the ice), I think remove this line
• Reading this lowered my personal opinion of Mamie Eisenhower. That's not a comment that I expect you to action on.
• Merge the one sentence paragraph on JFK resigning his Senate seat with the paragraph about LBJ resigning his Senate seat
• Eisenhower's farewell address is famous and should be expanded upon, especially mentioning the "military industrial complex"
• Ending diplomatic ties with Cuba - did Eisenhower tell JFK he was doing this? Was there a particular cause?

Selection of appointees

• Spell out FBI
• Which position did Lovett decline?
• Could be a good place for a few more photos

Retrospective analysis of the transition

• This section is too sparse, just one comment from one historian? Is there any other analysis, or developments that can be attached to the transition?

Further reading

• MOS:ALLCAPS

References

• The ref dates are in DMY format, but the US uses MDY.

That's quite a bit, and I did not write out here every time I noticed a repeated occurrence (commas, MOS:JOBTITLES, one sentence paragraphs). – Muboshgu (talk) 02:01, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

SecretName101, this GA has been on hold for almost a week. You've been active on other articles. Do you have the bandwidth to respond to these comments? – Muboshgu (talk) 21:11, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

• • @Muboshgu: planning to begin on making changes to this article very soon. SecretName101 (talk) 21:25, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Just a quick comment. I will not change "January 20th" to "January 20" as you recommended. This appears in quotations. It is directly quoting the wording used in a telegram. SecretName101 (talk) 00:21, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Ah you're right, that is from a quote. Scratch that one then. – Muboshgu (talk) 00:55, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Some of the requests appear to be to add more clarification where it might be impossible. For instance, I believe the source I found about Kennedy offering Lovett a position did not specify a specific position (I am pretty sure I would have specified if the source had). And it's possible that it was a general offer of a position rather than any specific positions. SecretName101 (talk) 17:36, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

SecretName101, okay. Do what you can to add detail where you can, and let me know where there is no further info. I don't plan on keeping this on hold for that much longer. I see you've made a few edits to the article, but not very many. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:08, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

This article has been on hold for more than two weeks now and you haven't done much to change the content or responded to my comments. I see you've been busy elsewhere. I'm failing this article, and hope my review helps you to improve this article if you decide to get back to it. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:08, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

________________________________________

Just some retrospective comments on changes proposed here that were incorrect suggestions I will not make (there were only a few):

• The lead mentions Clifford but not Neustadt. Same with the infobox. He is left out of the infobox because he co-led the pre-transition effort, but is not credited in sources with having played a similar lead in the transition proper.
• Any specifics on the time frames of when Clifford and Neustadt were put in charge, when the Brookings Institution was doing its peer review? Would add if I had seen more specific time frames in sources I could access. Cannot add what I do not know verifiably
• January 20th proper date format is "January 20". This was referring to a direct excerpt from a telegraph. It is best practice to not alter the original text, which evidently presented it differently than Wikipedia's manual of style would have advised President Eisenhower to.
• There's some redundancy in the info on transition HQ and meeting spaces. You mention Georgetown twice., because serving as the campaign HQ and the personal offices of Kennedy are not implicitly mutual. That's why it is mentioned twice, because those are two different contexts.
• Ted Kennedy needs commas. I'm not sure if it does or does not. Wouldn't it need commas if the descriptor being his brother was exclusive to Ted? But because ted was one of three brothers Kennedy had (two living brothers he had at the time), I'm not sure it needs commas. Might be wrong there.

I'll add any more later if I notice any more. SecretName101 (talk) 06:14, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

• Which position did Lovett decline? I think he was just offered to serve in the Cabinet. Unclear from the source I read if a specific role was on the table, or just a general offer (as it likely was). SecretName101 (talk) 02:14, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

  Odd that you're doing this a year after the fact, when you could have questioned my points when the review was active and maybe we could have come to an understanding. If you renominate, you'll get a fresh reviewer. I won't take it on a second time. – Muboshgu (talk) 02:50, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

  @Muboshgu: I understand. I am addressing these so that they do not need to be reoccurring concerns in the next reviewer's look. So that they understand why these were not changed.

  I believe I was unable to parse all the concerns during the previous review because I was overwhelmed by several good article nominations that I had submitted being simultaneously reviewed. As you stated at the time, you recognized at the time that I was busy elsewhere. SecretName101 (talk) 18:42, 27 September 2022 (UTC)