John F. Kennedy
| John F. Kennedy | |
| Order: | 35th President |
|---|---|
| Term of Office: | January 20, 1961–November 22, 1963 |
| Predecessor: | Dwight D. Eisenhower |
| Successor: | Lyndon B. Johnson |
| Date of Birth: | Tuesday, May 29, 1917 |
| Place of Birth: | Brookline, Massachusetts |
| Date of Death: | Friday, November 22, 1963 |
| Place of Death: | Dallas, Texas |
| First Lady: | Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy |
| Profession: | politician |
| Political Party: | Democratic |
| Vice President: | Lyndon B. Johnson |
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917–November 22, 1963), often referred to as Jack Kennedy or JFK, was the 35th (1961–1963) President of the United States.
Due to his energy, charisma, style and Cold War leadership, as well as his tragic and untimely death, Kennedy remains one of the most popular presidents of the 20th century.
Early life and education
Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, the son of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald. As a young man he attended Choate Rosemary Hall, a boarding school in Wallingford, Connecticut. In the fall of 1935, he enrolled in Princeton University, but was forced to leave during Christmas break after contracting jaundice. Next fall, he began attending Harvard University, where he severely injured his back playing football. Kennedy traveled to Europe twice during his years at Harvard, visiting the United Kingdom, while his father was serving as ambassador to that country. In 1938, Kennedy wrote his honors thesis on the British portion of the Munich Pact. He graduated cum laude from Harvard in June 1940.
Military service
In the spring of 1941, Kennedy volunteered for the US Army, but was rejected, mainly because of his troublesome back. However, he worked to strengthen himself during the summer and the US Navy accepted him in September of that year. He participated in various commands in the Pacific Theater and earned the rank of lieutenant, commanding a patrol torpedo boat or PT boat.
On August 2 of 1943, Kennedy's boat, the PT-109, was cruising west of New Georgia (near the Solomon Islands) when it was rammed by a Japanese destroyer. Kennedy was thrown across the deck, injuring his already troubled back. Still, Kennedy somehow towed a wounded man three miles through the ocean, arriving on an island. After a few days of searching, he found two friendly islanders, whom he sent for aid with a message carved on a coconut. For these actions, Kennedy received the Purple Heart, Navy Medal and Marine Corps Medal. However, his back injury had been aggravated and he also contracted malaria; he was honorably discharged in early 1945, just a few months before the Japanese surrender.
In May 2002 a National Geographic expedition found what is believed to be the wreckage of the PT-109 in the Solomon Islands [1]).
Early political career
After World War II, Kennedy entered politics (partly to fill the void of his popular brother, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., on whom his family had pinned many of their hopes upon but who was killed in the war). In 1946, Representative James M. Curley vacated his seat in an overwhelmingly Democratic district to become mayor of Boston and Kennedy ran for that seat, beating his Republican opponent by a large margin. He was reelected two times, but had a mixed voting record, often diverging from President Harry S. Truman and the rest of the Democratic Party.
In 1952, Kennedy ran for the Senate with the slogan "Kennedy will do more for Massachusetts." In an upset victory, he defeated Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. by a margin of about 70,000 votes. Kennedy opposed fellow Senator Joseph McCarthy's aggressive campaign to root out supposed Communists and Soviet spies in the U.S. government. McCarthy had been a friend of Kennedy's father, and his younger brother Robert F. Kennedy briefly worked for McCarthy. Although Kennedy was ill during the 65–22 vote to censure McCarthy, he had helped coordinate it.
Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier on September 12, 1953. He underwent several spinal operations in the two following years, nearly dying, and was often absent from the Senate. During this period, he published Profiles in Courage, highlighting eight instances in which U.S. Senators risked their careers by standing by their personal beliefs. The book was awarded the 1956 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
In 1956, Kennedy campaigned for the Vice Presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention, but convention delegates selected Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver instead. However, Kenendy's efforts helped bolster the young Senator's reputation within the party.
1960 Presidential election
In 1960, Kennedy declared his intent to run for President of the United States. In the Democratic primary election, he faced challanges from Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas and Adlai E. Stevenson, the Democratic nominee in 1952 and 1956 who was not officially running but was a favorite write-in candidate. Kennedy won key primaries like Wisconsin and West Virginia and landed the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in 1960.
On July 13, 1960 the Democratic party nominated Kennedy as its candidate for president. Kennedy asked Lyndon Johnson to be his Vice Presidential candidate, despite clashes between the two during the primary elections. Somewhat to Kennedy's staff's dismay, Johnson accepted.
In September and October, Kennedy debated Vice President Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the first ever televised presidential debates. During the debates, Nixon looked tense and unshaven and Kennedy composed and handsome, leading many to deem Kennedy the winner, although historians consider the two evenly matched as a orators. The debates are considered a political landmark: the point at which the medium of television played an important role in politics and looking presentable on camera became of paramount importance for presidential candidates.
In the general election on November 8 1960, Kennedy beat Nixon in a very close race. At the age of forty-three, he was the youngest man elected President (although Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest to be president, he first came to office by succeeding William McKinley when the latter was assassinated) and the first Roman Catholic.
Theodore H. White's 1961 book about that election campaign, The Making of the President 1960, was not only a national best-seller but is also often used as a supplementary text in high school and college courses in U.S. government and history.
Presidency
John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th President on January 20, 1961. In his inaugural address he spoke of the need for all Americans to be active citizens. "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country," he said. He also asked the nations of the world to join together to fight what he called the "common enemies of man... tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself."
Foreign policies
On April 17, 1961, the Kennedy administration implemented a modified version of Kennedy's predecessor Dwight D. Eisenhower's plan to depose Fidel Castro, the socialist leader of Cuba. With support from the CIA, 1,500 Cuban exiles returned to the island to depose Castro, but the Kennedy administration had overestimated popular resistance to Castro and the exiles did rally the Cuban people as expected.
By April 19, Castro's government had killed or captured most of the exiles and Kennedy was forced to negotiate for the release of 1,189 of them. After 20 months, Cuba released the exiles in exchange for $53 million in food and medicine. The incident was a major embarrassment for Kennedy, but he took full responsibility for the debacle (See Bay of Pigs Invasion for more information).
This event led to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which began on October 14, 1962 when American U-2 spy planes took photographs of the construction site of a Soviet nuclear missile site in Cuba. Kennedy faced a dire dilemma: If the U.S. attacked the sites it would likely have led to nuclear war with Russia. If the U.S. did nothing, it would appear to the world that the U.S. was weak.
Many military officials and cabinet members pressed for an air assault on the missile sites but Kennedy ordered a naval blockade and began negotiations with the Russians. A week later, he and Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev reached an agreement. Krushchev agreed secretly to remove the missiles if the U.S. both agreed never to invade Cuba, and removed its missiles six months later from Turkey.
Following this incident, which brought the world closer to nuclear war than any point before or since, Kennedy was cautious in confronting Soviet totalitarianism. On June 26, 1963, he visited West Berlin and gave a public speech criticizing the construction of the Berlin Wall. The speech is known for its famous phrase "Ich bin ein Berliner" (some joke that Kennnedy actually said, "I am a jelly donut", and that if he had taken out the "ein", it would have been "I am a Berliner").
Kennedy, however, did seek to contain the spread of communism. He sensed a growing communist threat to the South Vietnamese government and sent military advisers and finally U.S. troops to the area, beginning the Vietnam War.
Arguing that "those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable", Kennedy sought to contain communism in Latin America, by establishing the Alliance for Progress, which sent aid to troubled countries in the region and sought greater human rights standards in the region.
Troubled by the longterm dangers of radioactive contamination and nuclear weapons proliferation, Kennedy also pushed for the adoption of a Limited or Partial Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited atomic testing in the atmosphere. The United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union were the initial signatories to the Treaty. Kennedy signed the Treaty into law in 1963, and believed it to be one of the greatest accomplishments of his administration.
Another example of Kennedy's belief in the ability of nonmilitary power to improve the world was the creation of the Peace Corps, one of his first acts as president. Through this program, which still exists today, Americans volunteered to help underdeveloped nations in areas such as education, farming, health care, and construction.
Domestic policies
One of the most pressing domestic issues of Kennedy's era was the turbulent end of racial discrimination. The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 1954 that segregation in public schools would no longer be permitted. However, there were many schools, especially in southern states, that did not obey this decision. There also remained the practice of racial segregation on buses, in restaurants, movie theaters, and other public places.
Thousands of Americans of all races and backgrounds joined together to protest this discrimination. Kennedy supported racial integration and civil rights, and called the jailed Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s wife during the 1960 campaign, which drew much black support to his candidacy. However, as president, Kennedy initially believed the grassroots movement for civil right would only anger many Southern whites and make it even more difficult to pass civil rights laws through Congress, which was dominated by Southern Democrats, and he distanced himself from it. As a result, many civil rights leaders didn't think President Kennedy was supportive enough of their efforts. However, Kennedy's administration eventually assigned federal marshals to protect Freedom Ride demonstrators and used federal troops in Mississippi and a federalized National Guard in Alabama to quell disturbances resulting from court-ordered school desegregation.
Kennedy soon began to take a more hands-on approach to the issue, and proposed a new Civil Rights bill to the Congress but it failed to pass during his administration.
On June 11, 1963, he addressed the nation, asking them to end racism. "One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free," he said. "This nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds [and] on the principle that all men are created equal."
Also on the domestic front, Kennedy proposed a tax reform that included income tax cuts, but this was also not passed by the Congress.
Support of space programs
Kennedy was eager for the United States to lead the way in exploring outer space. The Soviet Union was ahead of the United States in its knowledge of space travel and Kennedy was determined that the U.S. could catch up. He said, "No nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space." Kennedy asked Congress to approve more than twenty two billion dollars for Apollo Project, which had the goal of landing an American man on the moon before the end of the decade. "We choose to go to the Moon and to do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard," Kennedy said. Six years after Kennedy's death, this goal was finally realized.
Cabinet
| OFFICE | NAME | TERM |
| President | John F. Kennedy | 1961–1963 |
| Vice President | Lyndon B. Johnson | 1961–1963 |
| Secretary of State | Dean Rusk | 1961–1963 |
| Secretary of the Treasury | C. Douglas Dillon | 1961–1963 |
| Secretary of Defense | Robert S. McNamara | 1961–1963 |
| Attorney General | Robert F. Kennedy | 1961–1963 |
| Postmaster General | J. Edward Day | 1961–1963 |
| John A. Gronouski | 1963 | |
| Secretary of the Interior | Stewart L. Udall | 1961–1963 |
| Secretary of Agriculture | Orville L. Freeman | 1961–1963 |
| Secretary of Commerce | Luther H. Hodges | 1961–1963 |
| Secretary of Labor | Arthur J. Goldberg | 1961–1962 |
| W. Willard Wirtz | 1962–1963 | |
| Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare | Abraham A. Ribicoff | 1961–1962 |
| Anthony J. Celebrezze | 1962–1963 | |
Supreme Court appointments
Kennedy appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:
- Byron Raymond White - 1962
- Arthur Joseph Goldberg - 1962
Image, social life and family
Both Kennedy and his wife "Jackie," were very young when compared to earlier presidents and first ladies, and were both extraordinarily popular in ways more common to pop singers and movie stars than politicians, influencing fashion trends and becoming the subjects of numerous photo spreads in popular magazines.
The Kennedys brought a new life and vigor to the atmosphere of the White House. They believed that the White House should be a place to celebrate American history, culture, and achievement and invited artists, writers, scientists, poets, musicians, actors, Nobel Prize winners and athletes to visit. Jacqueline Kennedy also gathered new art and furniture and eventually restored all the rooms in the White House.
The White House also seemed like a more fun, youthful place, because of the Kennedys' two young children, Caroline and John Jr. (who came to be known, erroneously, as "John-John"). Outside the White House Lawn, the Kennedys established a pre-school, swimming pool, and tree-house.
Behind the glamorous facade, the Kennedys also suffered many personal tragedies, most notably the death of their newborn son Patrick Bouvier Kennedy in August 1963.
Information revealed after John F. Kennedy's death leaves no doubt that he had at least one, and probably several extramarital affairs while in office, including liaisons in the White House with some female staff and visitors. In his era, though, such issues were not considered fit for publication, and in Kennedy's case, they were never publicly discussed during his life.
The "charisma" Kennedy and his family projected posthumously led to the figurative designation of "Camelot" for his administration.
Assassination and aftermath
President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, while on a political trip through Texas. This was a shattering and extraordinary event in the lives of most Americans who lived through it; "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" was a frequent question in the years that followed, and could still be heard for many decades afterwards.
Lee Harvey Oswald, apprehended for the assassination, was himself fatally shot by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner with some ties to organized crime, before he could be formally charged or brought to trial. Four days after Kennedy and Oswald were killed, President Lyndon B. Johnson created the Warren Commission, chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren, to investigate the assassination. See John F. Kennedy assassination for further details of the circumstances surrounding Kennedy's death.
Kennedy's life and the subsequent conspiracy theories surrounding his death have been the inspiration for many films. Recent ones include Nigel Turner's 1988 mini series The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Oliver Stone's 1991 blockbuster, JFK, and 1993's JFK: Reckless Youth, which looked at Kennedy's early years.
Kennedy was the most recent Democratic president to push for income tax cuts to improve the economy. He was also the most recent Northern Democrat to win the Presidency.
In November 2002 long-secret medical records were made public, revealing Kennedy's physical ailments were more severe than previously thought. He was in constant pain from fractured vertebrae despite multiple medications, in addition to suffering from severe digestive problems and Addison's disease. Kennedy received multiple injections of procaine before public events in order to appear healthy.
Kennedy's portrait appears on the U.S. half dollar.
On March 14, 1967 Kennedy's body was moved to a permanent burial place and memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.
Related articles
- John F. Kennedy assassination
- John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library in Boston, Massachusetts
- Kennedy family
- U.S. presidential election, 1960
- Lincoln/Kennedy Coincidences
- History of the United States (1945–1964)
- Peace Corps
- Whiz Kids
- Evelyn Lincoln
External links
| Preceded by Dwight D. Eisenhower |
'President of the United States' 1961–1963 |
Succeeded by Lyndon B. Johnson |
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