Politics & Power Quote by David Kay

“Fortunately” is doing the quiet heavy lifting here, a scientist’s version of a moral verdict disguised as a neutral adverb. David Kay isn’t just recounting an internal policy disagreement; he’s smuggling in a lesson about expertise, restraint, and the seductive momentum of “ambitious and aggressive” plans when they’re laundered through briefings and estimates.

The line frames Kennedy and Robert Kennedy as decision-makers willing to break with the technocratic script. That matters because the subtext isn’t anti-expert so much as anti-determinism: estimates are not fate, and advisers don’t get to convert worst-case projections into a mandate. By calling the recommended course “ambitious,” Kay hints at the career and institutional incentives that often attach to escalation: boldness reads as seriousness, while caution can be painted as weakness. “Less ambitious” becomes a euphemism for choosing not to gamble with catastrophe.

The likely context is Cold War crisis management (the kind where “aggressive” options carry unimaginably high stakes, from invasion scenarios to nuclear brinkmanship). Kay’s intent is to remind readers that restraint can be an affirmative, courageous choice rather than a failure of will. He’s also positioning the Kennedys’ skepticism toward estimates as prudent leadership: the capacity to treat intelligence as input, not instruction, and to resist the emotional narcotic of decisive action when decisive action is exactly what the situation cannot afford.