JOHN F. KENNEDY
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald (1917-1963), was the youngest man ever elected president of the United States, and he was the youngest ever to die in office. He was shot to death on Nov. 22, 1963, after two years and 10 months as chief executive. The world mourned Kennedy's death, and presidents, premiers, and members of royalty walked behind the casket at his funeral. Kennedy was succeeded as president by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Kennedy, a Democrat, won the presidency with his "New Frontier" program, after a series of television debates with his Republican opponent, Vice President Richard M. Nixon. At 43, Kennedy was the youngest man ever elected president. (Theodore Roosevelt was 42 when he became president upon the death of William McKinley. He was 46 when he was elected president.) Kennedy was the first president of the Roman Catholic faith. He also was the first president born in the 1900's.
In his inaugural address, President Kennedy declared that "a new generation of Americans" had taken over leadership of the country. He said Americans would "... pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." He told Americans: "Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country."
Kennedy became widely known by his initials, JFK. He won world respect as the leader of the Free World. He greatly increased U.S. prestige in 1962 when he turned aside the threat of an atomic war with the Soviet Union while carrying out negotiations that resulted in the Soviets withdrawing missiles from Communist Cuba. The Kennedy action marked the start of a period of "thaw" in the Cold War as relations grew friendlier with the Soviet Union. In 1963, the United States, the Soviet Union, and over 100 other countries signed a treaty outlawing the testing of atomic bombs under water and on or above ground. On the home front, the United States enjoyed its greatest prosperity in history. African Americans' demands for civil rights caused serious domestic problems, but African Americans made greater progress in their quest for equal rights than at any time since the Civil War. During Kennedy's administration, the United States made its first piloted space flights and prepared to send astronauts to the moon.
The War in Vietnam
Kennedy sees Vietnam, ten
thousand miles away, as a very dangerous place to expand a war. And Maxwell
Taylor, his chief of staff, said, "Kennedy had a visceral aversion to putting
ground forces into Southeast Asia, into Vietnam." Kennedy himself said, "This is
not like Korea" -- in
Korea
there was a direct act of aggression. This is different. And it's a kind of
subversion, and if we get involved in there it's not going to be so clear to the
public that we should have done this and it could lead to a political breach in
the United States.
Also, he instructed Bob McNamara in '62 to begin planning an exit from Vietnam, and he asked him to do it over a three-year period so we could be out of there by 1965. And McNamara laid out a plan to be out of there by 1968.
But there is other evidence that Kennedy was really doubtful about the wisdom
of escalating the war. I think the most telling evidence has to do with the
American press corps in Saigon. The press, during Kennedy's time in office, were
critical of American performance in Vietnam and they were pushing the
administration to be more effective, to save South Vietnam from Communism and
demonstrate that they could be a more effective influence on that conflict.
Kennedy was very worried that the stories coming out of Vietnam would force the
issue onto the front pages of the newspapers and then compel him to escalate
that war. In 1961, '62, '63 -- I checked the Gallup polls -- there are no Gallup
polls about Vietnam. The first one is April '64, and in that poll a
cross-section of Americans are asked what they knew about Vietnam and only 37%
say they knew anything about this conflict, about this war. So Kennedy has great
doubts. November 20, 1963, he's going off to Texas, he says to his assistant
secretary of state, Mike Forrester, "When I come back from Texas we have to
review this whole Vietnam issue and talk about how we get out of there." See, it
was including a discussion of how we get out of there... I don't think he ever
would have escalated that war to the degree, to the extent, that Lyndon Johnson
did.
If Kennedy Had Lived
If Kennedy had lived, he would have been reelected, surely, in 1964,
running against Barry Goldwater. He would have won probably as big a landslide
as Lyndon Johnson commanded. He would have carried with him into the House and
the Senate majorities comparable to what Johnson had, which were roughly
two-thirds Democratic majorities. And Kennedy then would have put across his
reform legislation. He had on the table an $11 billion tax cut, federal aid to
elementary, secondary and higher education, a
civil rights bill, a bill on poverty, a department of transportation, a
department of housing and urban development. All that, I think, would have been
passed. But those became Lyndon Johnson's legislative measures. I think one
hundred years from now historians will look back and see the presidency of the
'60s as a Kennedy-Johnson presidency. And especially on domestic affairs,
Kennedy puts this all on the table, Johnson gets it enacted -- surely using
Kennedy's martyrdom, but again -- Kennedy would have passed this too.
If he had lived and had all the success in domestic affairs I think he would have matched it, in a sense, in dealing with Vietnam, Cuba. There were back-channel negotiations and discussions going on in the last three months of Kennedy's presidency about the possibility of getting on better footing...
I don't want to overstate this point: utopia wasn't around the corner. But,
if he had lived, we would not have had Lyndon Johnson, the credibility gap, I
don't think we would have had the extent of our involvement in Vietnam, we
wouldn't have had
Richard
Nixon, or
Watergate. There would have been other problems, to be sure -- there always
are -- but it wouldn't have been the problems I've just mentioned, and I think
maybe there would have been less political cynicism in this country, less
alienation from politics than what we've experienced over the last forty years.
John F. Kennedy's Legacy
There seems to be a consistency in the public mind in regarding Kennedy as one
of the great presidents in American history. There is something about him that
continues to command the loyalty, the approval of the public.
Part of it was the fact that he was martyred, but that's not sufficient to explain it because William McKinley was assassinated and forty years later nobody remembered who he was. There's much more at work here. And I think television is important here. It's captured him on tape -- he's frozen in our minds at the age of 46... what he came across as was so charismatic, charming, witty, engaging, smart -- just an extraordinary personality. And those press conferences he held are captured on tape and have great appeal to people to this day. And also I think he conveyed a kind of hope, a kind of promise to the public, the expectation of a better future. And I don't think that's been lost. The country, I think, is still tied to this and remembers him in such fond and positive terms.
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Moments before being shot, Kennedy rode past a friendly crowd in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Mrs. Kennedy sat next to him, and Governor John B. Connally of Texas sat in front of him. Suddenly, shots rang out. Kennedy was fatally wounded, and Connally was seriously injured. |
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For without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which men ... have lived ... A man does what he must—in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures—and that is the basis of all human morality. |
—Source: Profiles in Courage, 1956. |
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—Source: Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1961. |
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—Source: Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1961. |
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—Source: Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1961. |
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—Source: Message to Congress on proposed civil rights bill, June 19, 1963. |
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—Source: Address at City Hall in West Berlin, Germany, June 26, 1963. |
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