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'''John Fitzgerald Kennedy''' '''(May 29, 1917 - November 22, 1963)''' was a decorated World War II veteran, and the 35^th [[President of the United States of America]], the youngest person elected to that position.  He died in 1963 when he was assassinated by [[Lee Harvey Oswald]].  

'''John Fitzgerald Kennedy''' often called '''JFK''', (May 29, 1917 - November 22, 1963)''' was the 35^th [[President of the United States of America]] for 1000 days in 1961-63; he was the youngest person elected president.  His family were leaders of the Irish Catholic wing of the [[Democratic Party]] His White House years saw few changes in domestic policy, although the civil rights movement gained strength.  In foreign policy he was an anti-Communist "hawk" in the [[Cold War]], confronting the [[Soviet Union]] in the 1962 [[Cuban Missile Crisis]]. He was assassinated by a Communist sympathizer, and became a national icon and martyr. He is best known for his call to civic virtue:

{{cquote|And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.|4=John Kennedy's [[John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address|Inaugural Address]]|5=<ref>http://www.famousquotes.me.uk/speeches/John_F_Kennedy/5.htm</ref>}}

{{cquote|And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.|4=John Kennedy's [[John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address|Inaugural Address]]|5=<ref>http://www.famousquotes.me.uk/speeches/John_F_Kennedy/5.htm</ref>}}

Kennedy won the [[United States presidential election, 1960|1960 Presidential election]] against [[Richard Nixon]] by a thin margin.  An important part of the campaign turned out to be the role of television.  When Kennedy and Nixon held their presidential debate, those who listened on radio thought that Nixon won, but those who saw it on television thought Kennedy had won.  Kennedy, young, tanned, and wearing discrete makeup for the camera, had a better television presence during the [[Presidential Debates]].

Educated at private schools and (following numerous relatives) Harvard College, young Kennedy was an indifferent student until the war in Europe focused his attention. Extensive interviews with major British politicians and observers led to an unusually precocious senior thesis that became an influential book Why England Slept (1940).  As second son in the powerful [[Kennedy Family]], he was marked for an intellectual career as a writer or journalist, while his older brother Joseph was slated for politics by their hyper-manipulative father, [[Joseph P. Kennedy]].  The brother’s death in combat, combined with JFK’s heroic war record, set the stage for his political debut as a Congressional candidate in 1946. 

Although the father had abandoned Boston in frustration, JFK’s return to the city restored the family’s traditional power base among the large and powerful Irish-American community in Massachusetts.  Strong family connections with the Chicago Irish political community (led by Mayor [[Richard J. Daley]]) augmented his national Catholic base.  JFK always had two sets of advisors, an inner circle of Irish politicians who planned his campaigns, and a Protestant-Jewish coterie of intellectuals (mostly from Harvard) who promoted his stature as the intellectual in politics.  That image was solidified by the Pulitzer Prize awarded his ''Profiles in Courage'' (1956).  JFK possessed powerful assets: an excellent speaker and glib commentator on major issues, a middle-of-the-road political record that offended no one, strong expertise in foreign policy, articulate anti-Communism, unfailing charm and stage presence, a national network of Irish allies, a Catholic base that comprised a fourth of the electorate, and an immense purse that was ready to fund his ambitions, not to mention innumerable relatives who campaigned endlessly on his behalf.  JFK fought his way into the Senate in 1952 by defeating incumbent Republican [[Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.]], the archetypal Yankee.  With the national Democratic party leaderless, JFK largely ignored the old-boy Senate (controlled by his rival [[Lyndon Johnson]]) to display his talents through newspaper and television interviews, magazine articles, and highly publicized speeches to Democratic party gatherings in every part of the country.  Aided by his closest advisor, his brother [[Robert Kennedy]], JFK appealed to conservatives by tolerating Joe McCarthy and instead launching relentless attacks on corrupt labor leaders, especially [[Jimmy Hoffa]] of the [[Teamsters Union]].  

Kennedy was involved in the [[Bay of Pigs]] fiasco, refusing to commit to an invasion to aid the beleaguered exiles.  When a year later the [[Soviet Union]] was building a ballistic missile site in [[Cuba]] that could house nuclear missiles, Kennedy handled the ensuing [[Cuban Missile Crisis]] aggressively.

The Kennedy family represented the conservative wing of the Democratic party, and was known for its anti-Communism and close ties with Republican Senator [[Joe McCarthy]] Many liberal Democrats, led by [[Eleanor Roosevelt]], distrusted JFK primarily because they could never forget the father’s break with Franklin Roosevelt or the family’s support for McCarthy.  Yet with the fading away of [[Adlai Stevenson]] (the liberal Democratic candidate in 1952 and 1956), liberals lacked a viable candidate of their own. 

By 1960 JFK was the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, with the biggest question mark whether his Catholic base of support would be outweighed by anti-Catholicism of the sort that hurt [[Al Smith]] so badly in 1928.  Of course prohibition was no longer an issue, and fear of Tammany-like bossism had faded away with the demise of most big city machines.  The Kennedy juggernaut defeated rival [[Hubert Humphrey]], a liberal, in the West Virginia primary, a state with so much poverty and so few Catholics that party leaders were convinced they had a winner.  Kennedy won over the party’s intellectuals by his effective academic connections, while shaming doubters by a brilliant performance before the Protestant ministers of Houston.  There he enunciated the position that he did not speak for the Catholic Church on matters of religion, and it did not speak for him on public affairs.  He was able to take that position because there were no high intensity moral issues such as abortion before the public.  Although JFK’s religiosity consisted of nominal attendance at Sunday Mass, he excited tens of millions of Catholics who saw his election as president as confirmation of their full recognition as true Americans.  With 8 of 10 Catholics voting for Kennedy, he ran up majorities in ethnic strongholds like Chicago that barely provided the margin of victory against Richard Nixon.  Apart from a few pockets of antipopery among some Midwestern Lutherans and Southern Baptists, fears of Catholicism had largely disappeared from the voting booth. 

President Kennedy was primarily interested in foreign policy.  Weeks after his memorable inaugural address sounded the tocsin for vigorous anti-communism, he encountered disaster when his invasion of Cuba failed at the [[Bay of Pigs]] in 1961, and he was forced to ransom thousands of soldiers who were captured by [[Fidel Castro]]'s Communist regime.  Soviet leader [[Nikita Khrushchev]], sensing weakness, pushed hard on the Berlin issue, and was able to build the Berlin Wall despite Kennedy’s anguished rhetoric, "Ich bin ein Berliner!" ("I am a Berliner!") 

 

Khrushchev and Castro went too far in 1962, secretly setting up medium range missiles in Cuba equipped with nuclear warheads that threatened the southeast as far as Atlanta.  In his greatest moment, Kennedy rejected invasion plans but imposed a blockade and demanded the missiles be removed immediately.  Khrushchev publicly backed down, but privately got Kennedy to remove American missiles from Turkey, while Castro secured the promise that the United States would never invade his island.  The Cuban missile crisis reversed JFK’s image of ineptness in foreign policy, but his quiet, continuous escalation of military involvement in Vietnam set the stage for the whirlwind reaped by his successor. 

As senator, JFK had shown limited interest in domestic affairs apart from labor union corruption.  As president he ignored that issue.  Working with his high-powered economic advisors he proposed a Keynesian program to stimulate the economy, not by higher spending but by tax cuts.  No matter: none of his domestic policy initiatives went anywhere.  Congress was effectively controlled a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats; the alignment remained unchanged after the status-quo midterm elections of 1962.

Kennedy authorized the de-segregation of federal housing and proposed the civil rights bill, passed after his assassination.  He created the [[Peace Corps]] and also pledged to put a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s, a pledge that was later fulfilled after his death. Likewise he proposed tax cuts, which were approved after his death.  

Kennedy authorized the de-segregation of federal housing and proposed the civil rights bill, passed after his assassination.  He created the [[Peace Corps]] and also pledged to put a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s, a pledge that was later fulfilled after his death. Likewise he proposed tax cuts, which were approved after his death.  

Kennedy appointed one justice to the [[U.S. Supreme Court]], [[Byron White]]. White's rulings did not fit traditional political categories; he dissented in [[Roe v. Wade]] but joined the majority to strike down the death penalty in [[Furman v. Georgia]].

A new issue that Kennedy had not anticipated blazed into view as the civil rights movement in the South, led by Martin Luther King, produced dramatic confrontations with segregationist Democrats, especially Governor George Wallace of Alabama, and Ross Barnett of Mississippi.  A month before the 1962 election Kennedy sent federal marshals and Army MP’s to enforce a federal court order that African American student James Meredith be admitted to the University of Mississippi.  Violent resistance by townspeople left two civilians dead, hundreds injured, and 166 federals injured.  The confrontation in Alabama in 1963 was nonviolent, and boosted Wallace’s visibility as a leader of southern Democrats.  JFK ignored the risks to his southern base and spoke out in favor of civil rights legislation, but as in so many instances, no legislation was passed.

 

Kennedy’s assassination in November, 1963, was a stunning shock to all Americans.  Incoming president Lyndon Johnson used the assassination to rally support for his liberal programs, painting them as memorials to Kennedy until Johnson won reelection in 1964 by a landslide over conservative leader [[Barry Goldwater]].

 

The Irish Catholic community took it hard, and immediately elevated JFK to a sort of sainthood status, celebrating the miracle that he had liberated them from second class citizenship. Johnson in 1964 successfully retained the Catholic base JFK had fostered, but that was the last hurrah. By 1966 Catholics started showing their disillusionment with Johnson, who never recovered from the wave after wave of urban riots that followed his civil rights bills, nor from the disillusionment of the intellectuals with his [[Vietnam War]] policy.   With the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968, and the failure of youngest brother [[Ted Kennedy]] to recover his brothers’ national base, the Kennedy legacy increasingly became the romantic memory of Camelot.  Disclosures of JFK’s astonishing sexual involvements, and detailed reports of his multiple grave medical problems fascinated the public but failed to break the myth that if only JFK had lived his second term would be a story of political triumphs that would restore the people’s faith in their government.

 

Kennedy appointed liberal Arthur Goldberg to the [[U.S. Supreme Court]], as well as [[Byron White]]. White's rulings combined both liberal and conservative positions.  

Kennedy's image appears on the American half-dollar coin.   

Kennedy's image appears on the American half-dollar coin.   

==Notes==

 

 

====Notes====

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{{USPresidents}}

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[[Category:Democratic Party]]

[[Category:Democratic Party]]