was john f kennedy a good president essay

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Americans think John F. Kennedy was one of our greatest presidents. He wasn’t.

Fifty years ago Friday, Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy. The assassination was a tragedy -- and it turned the target into something of a secular political saint. There are few modern presidents about whom The Post's own George Will and E.J. Dionne can agree, but JFK appears to be one.

"It tells us a great deal about the meaning of John F. Kennedy in our history that  liberals  and  conservatives  alike are eager to pronounce him as one of their own," Dionne notes. A Gallup poll last week  found that Americans rate him more highly than any of the other 11 presidents since Eisenhower. A 2011 Gallup poll found that he came in fourth when Americans were asked to name the greatest president of all time, behind Ronald Reagan, Abraham Lincoln, and Bill Clinton, but ahead of George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, and Thomas Jefferson.

Some of that reputation is hard to argue with. Kennedy was a brilliant rhetorician who inspired a generation of young Americans, and his death left a lingering scar on the American psyche. But it's important that his presidency be evaluated on its actual merits. And on the merits, John F. Kennedy was not a good president. Here are six reasons why.

1. The Cuban Missile Crisis was his fault

Historians disagree on what exactly led to the October 1962 crisis that almost ended in a nuclear exchange. But basically every interpretation suggests that, had the Eastern Seaboard been wiped out that month, it would have been the result of Kennedy's fecklessness.

Let's take the most pro-Kennedy view — ably summarized by Max Fisher here — first. By the telling of Yale's John Lewis Gaddis (an able if very pro-Western historian of the Cold War), the placement of missiles in Cuba was motivated by a desire to avoid an American invasion of the island. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev believed that such an invasion was imminent — not an unreasonable view, given that Kennedy had tried to do just that a year earlier with the Bay of Pigs Invasion — and viewed the missiles as a necessary deterrent. Kennedy did not understand this, Gaddis argues, instead viewing the move as an attempt to improve the Soviet position relative to the United States's in case of a nuclear exchange, which led to him fumbling about until reaching a deal that included promising not to invade Cuba again.

If that was the situation, then what appears to have happened is that Kennedy misinterpreted Khrushchev's action as an act of aggression against the United States and prepared for war — including doing numerous things to potentially provoke one, like revealing the missiles' existence publicly and going on DEFCON 2 — in response to his misunderstanding, backing down only once the Soviets told him what they really wanted, and he calmed down. A+ statesmanship, right there.

Another notable Kennedy defender is Graham Allison of the Kennedy School, whose book " The Essence of Decision" is a classic treatment of the crisis. Allison refers to the Cuban missile incident as, "a guide for how to defuse conflicts, manage great-power relationships, and make sound decisions about foreign policy in general." But he willingly concedes that Kennedy took numerous actions that increased the risk of war. "NATO aircraft with Turkish pilots loaded active nuclear bombs and advanced to an alert status in which individual pilots could have chosen to take off, fly to Moscow, and drop a bomb," he notes.

Allison defends that on the view that raising the stakes improved the U.S. bargaining position. All of that would make sense if getting rid of the missiles was a major security priority. It wasn't. The Soviets already had ICBMs, as well as nukes on submarines stationed near the United States.; they could nuke the United States whenever. Putting nukes in Cuba didn't change that. As Benjamin Schwarz noted in The Atlantic recently, "The U.S. almost certainly would have had far more time to detect and respond to an imminent Soviet missile strike from Cuba than to attacks from Soviet bombers, ICBMs, or SLBMs [submarine-launched ballistic missiles]."

But the worst part of Kennedy's handling of the crisis is that he spurred the missiles' deployment in the first place. There was the Bay of Pigs debacle, of course, which confirmed to Cuba and the Soviet Union that there was a real threat of an American invasion they needed to deter.

Further, as Schwarz notes, Kennedy had deployed medium-range "Jupiter" missiles to Italy and Turkey (which, of course, bordered the USSR) earlier in his term. The missiles had no deterrent value and were basically only useful as a means of attacking the Soviet nuclear arsenal as part of a first strike. That meant they were extremely destabilizing, something that was known at the time and provoked concern from Sens. Albert Gore Sr. (D-Tenn.) and Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.). Insofar as wanting to counter U.S. nuclear capabilities was a major motivation for Khrushchev, the Cuba move mainly made sense as a counter to a way more dangerous move by Kennedy. Kennedy even conceded to aides that the Cuba and Turkey missiles were "the same."

If Gaddis is right, and Kennedy viewed Khrushchev's move as an attempt to jockey for a better position in a potential nuclear exchange with the United States, then Kennedy surely would have concluded that Khrushchev only placed the missiles in Cuba because he placed them in Turkey first. Kennedy, under Gaddis's telling, escalated  knowing the situation was his fault .

You should really read Schwarz's piece in its entirety, but the quote it includes from Sheldon Stern, who served as the JFK Library's resident historian for over two decades, is a good summation: "John F. Kennedy and his administration, without question, bore a substantial share of the responsibility for the onset of the Cuban missile crisis."

2. The Bay of Pigs invasion was his fault

This is hard to break out from the missile crisis it helped trigger, but, remarkably, nearly triggering a nuclear war was not the only way in which the Bay of Pigs invasion was a massive mess. There were, of course, the hundreds of deaths and thousands injured, and the tremendous damage it did to America's reputation around the world, but perhaps the most enduring legacy of the invasion was that it firmly established Cuba as a Communist state.

As David Grann noted in his biography of William Alexander Morgan — an American member of the Cuban revolutionary forces who pushed for a democratic Cuba against a Marxist-Leninist faction led by Che Guevara — the first time Fidel Castro identified Cuba as a socialist country was when the Bay of Pigs invasion happened. When Kennedy took office, it was probably too late for Morgan's side to win; Morgan himself had been executed a month before the invasion, and Che was gaining ground with Castro, who had once had more in common ideologically with Morgan. But the invasion sent Cuba firmly into Soviet hands. "It was supposed to rid the hemisphere of a potential Soviet base, but it pushed Fidel Castro into the waiting arms of the Soviet Union," the historian Peter Kornbluh says . "It was meant to undermine his revolution but it truly helped him to consolidate it."

And despite happening very early in his term, it was Kennedy's fault. He had several meetings on the subject and received numerous memoranda, many giving him cover to nix the operation. Aides Arthur Schlesinger, Robert Goodwin, McGeorge Bundy, Thomas Mann, and Chester Bowles all expressed skepticism, as did William Fulbright, the chair of the Senate foreign relations committee. The president himself seemed to be conflicted . But he went through with the plan anyway, despite having numerous opportunities to reverse course and plenty of bureaucratic support had he chosen to do so. He didn't, a bunch of people died, and Cuba is still under Communist rule today.

3. He escalated in Vietnam

Some post-defeat revisionists, most notably Oliver Stone, have tried to argue that Kennedy would have somehow saved us from escalating in Vietnam. There's little evidence for this. For one thing, Kennedy's decision to overthrow South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm was a decisive move for greater hands-on American involvement in the conflict.

After that, the North Vietnamese escalated in an attempt to destabilize the South Vietnamese state, which in turn spurred Lyndon Johnson's 1964 escalation. That's the thing that most revisionist accounts fail to address. Kennedy's comments on the war during his lifetime obviously don't take into account the North Vietnamese escalation. It was enough to spur Johnson to escalate in turn, and we have little reason to believe Kennedy would have acted any differently.

What's more, Robert Kennedy himself said in 1964 that JFK never considered withdrawing. Some, like Robert Dallek, try to argue around that and cite comments that suggested Kennedy wanted to get U.S. advisers home, but I'm inclined to agree with Tom Ricks's interpretation of those comments: "Sure, Kennedy wanted out of Vietnam -- just like Lyndon Johnson wanted out a few years later:  We'll scale down our presence after victory is secure . And much more than Johnson, Kennedy was influenced by General Maxwell Taylor, who I suspect had been looking for a 'small war' mission for the Army for several years."

4. Oh, and he backed an ill-advised coup in Iraq too

Ricks points out that Kennedy also authorized a 1963 coup against the pro-Soviet military leader of Iraq. The guy was hardly a saint, but you should generally avoid killing other countries' leaders when you can help it (I would argue you should avoid killing people, full stop, but that's another matter). The coup put the Iraqi Baath party in power, setting in motion the chain of events that would result in Saddam Hussein's decades-long rule over the nation.

5. He went way too slowly on civil rights

Kennedy is to be commended for sending federal marshals to protect Freedom Riders and troops to defend students at the state universities of Mississippi and Alabama, and for calling for a ban on racial discrimination in public accommodations in 1963. But let's not mistake the man for a friend of civil rights. When the Freedom Rides started, Kennedy was enraged, demanding of his adviser Harris Wofford, "Can't you get your Goddamned friends off those buses? Stop them."

He took a decisive turn in 1963 by calling for a real Civil Rights Act, but that came after two years of pressure from civil-rights protestors, and he still wasn't ready to go all out. As Jackie Robinson — who backed Nixon in 1960 — put it , he "needed prodding" on the issue. Nick Bryant, who wrote the sole history of Kennedy's civil-rights record (appropriately titled "The Bystander"), concludes that Kennedy probably would have passed the Civil Rights Act had he lived, but, "At the time of his death, however, Kennedy had only a small record of accomplishment in civil rights." He adds that his administration "adhered to a distinctly southern timetable in the implementation of Brown v. Board of Education ."

It's hard to say if Nixon would have been better on civil rights — though it's worth remembering that he was friends with Martin Luther King Jr., was an NAACP member , and expressed to King his frustration with the tepid pace at which civil rights was moving — but Hubert Humphrey, who made his name in politics with a 1948 stand for civil rights at the Democratic convention, certainly would have been. In any case, Kennedy's record is nothing to write home about.

6. He passed no domestic legislation of any consequence.

So let's recap the legislation Kennedy signed into law:

• He signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, a good step toward ending wage discrimination based on gender but one which was extremely incomplete. It's hard to disaggregate its effect from that of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — which, surprisingly to many, ended up including an amendment extending its protections to victims of sex discrimination as well as race discrimination. The CRA was a stronger law, which makes isolating the Equal Pay Act's effects tough. That said, we know that the Equal Pay Act imposes an onerous standard on women trying to prove discrimination, and some scholars have argued that it is basically useless for women in white collar professions or other jobs with less standardized wages. A good first step? Sure. But hardly transformative.

• He created the Peace Corps, famously. While that organization played a valuable role in improving foreign attitudes toward the United States during the Cold War, it's far too small to be a significant development agency, and the work it does is not especially conducive to that goal either. As Gal Beckerman put it in a good profile of the agency in the Boston Globe recently, "The agency has never been structured to do development effectively. In fact, if you were trying to design an organization to avoid having a lasting impact, it might look a lot like the Peace Corps: inexperienced volunteers sent to work in near-total isolation from one another, with time limits guaranteed to make their impact only short term." And as Robert Strauss has pointed out , its placements are rarely based on where volunteers would provide the most help. The corps was probably a net good, but was much too small and inefficient to justify the extent to which it's burnished Kennedy's reputation.

• He signed legislation into law giving the president the authority to negotiate sweeping tariff reductions, power that would be used to great effect…by Johnson.

• He signed a modest increase in Social Security benefits, boosting the minimum monthly benefit from $33 to $40 ($257.76 to $312.44 in 2013 dollars) and enabling early retirement at age 62.

• He also signed modest changes to Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), the main welfare program at the time, renaming it Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and changing the federal matching program.

What of his executive actions domestically? Well, he allowed collective bargaining among federal employees, your view of which will depend on whether you think the public sector is a proper place for labor organizing or if, like Franklin Roosevelt , you think that an inappropriate expansion of the practice. The Apollo Program was first conceived under the Eisenhower administration but Kennedy provided strong public support for it. If you think space exploration's important, that's a big step, but the Johnson administration did the heavy lifting in actually completing a manned moon landing. Whether Kennedy would have done the same is, of course, impossible to know.

Similarly, whether Kennedy would have passed much of the legislation enacted under Johnson is hard to say. The 20 percent across-the-board tax cut Johnson signed in 1964, for example, was a Kennedy initiative; depending on how you feel about tax legislation that predominantly benefited high earners, that might be a credit to Kennedy. But we do know that Medicare, Johnson's leading domestic accomplishment, would not have been passed under Kennedy. JFK had tried to pass the legislation in 1962 and the effort went disastrously, as Kennedy antagonized Democrats in Congress whose support he needed. The bill died in the Senate in July 1962, not to be considered again until Johnson took office.

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Kennedy’s Presidency Accomplished Little, But His Historic Myth Endures

I grew up in the 1980s and became an adult in the 1990s, in a country whose political and cultural authorities believed it had been shaped irrevocably for the worse by John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Kennedy represented greatness — or at least incipient greatness tragically cut short. It was the last time government was good, before the ’60 revolt, Vietnam, and Watergate destroyed the public’s trust in it.

That belief still has purchase. C-Span’s latest Presidential Historians Survey finds that Kennedy has maintained his long-held rank among the pantheon of historical greats. Despite having served less than one term, and having left behind barely any accomplishments, he ranks eighth, according to a panel composed of academic historians, along with a smattering of presidential biographers.

Kennedy was elected president at the nadir of polarization, when differences between Republicans and Democrats were so faint it was frequently difficult to attribute coherent views to either party as a whole. This blurring of partisan differences made the president’s personality especially important. Whereas today’s polarized system almost guarantees that certain policy changes will follow a given partisan outcome — any Republican president elected in 2016 would have signed a big tax cut for the wealthy — in Kennedy’s time, the president’s personal issues of concern, and talent at handling Congress, mattered a lot.

Kennedy campaigned for office mainly on his youth and a promise to close the “missile gap” with the Soviet Union, which did not actually exist. He did promise some action on civil rights, but shelved his plans on the calculation that it would offend the conservative southern Democrats he needed to advance the rest of his domestic program. The Dixecrats held up his proposals anyway, and the two main domestic programs he had run on, federal aid for education and establishing a national health-insurance program for the elderly, went nowhere during his term.

Kennedy was frustrated by his lack of progress in Congress, but rationalized his failure as the product of broader historic circumstances. “Kennedy seemed to think he was a man born too late: He believed there were no great problems to be solved, no great dragons to slay, no great compromises to be made,” observed Richard Reeves in his biography.

To the extent that his reputation is attributable to anything substantive, it would be in his foreign policy. Kennedy approved a shambolic invasion of Cuba, and then bungled into a nuclear showdown with the Soviets that he managed to avert. His reputation benefits primarily from the contrast with his successor, who escalated the Vietnam War to a degree that it unraveled his presidency. Kennedy benefited from the unprovable assumption that he would have pulled out of Vietnam and accepted defeat much quicker than Lyndon Johnson, even though Kennedy’s policies laid the groundwork for his vice-president’s subsequent escalation, and followed the same calculation: that a Democrat could not afford the political cost of losing another country to communist expansion.

Kennedy’s retrospective luster resulted directly from the peace movement’s rage against Johnson. And while fury with the Vietnam catastrophe was utterly rational, that rage spilled over into myopia and outright delusion. Liberals suspected Johnson had conspired to kill Kennedy and take his job. They overlooked his extraordinary list of accomplishments, a list exceeded only by Franklin Roosevelt: the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, Medicare, Medicaid, federal aid for housing, education, poverty, and more.

Much of Johnson’s Great Society was passed with the benefit of liberal congressional majorities he won in 1964, arising from circumstances (primarily the residual sympathy from Kennedy’s murder and the extremism of Barry Goldwater) that Kennedy did not enjoy. On the other hand, Johnson wrangled the 1964 Civil Rights Act out of the very same Congress that Kennedy couldn’t budge. Johnson’s success implies that Kennedy’s domestic stalemate was not entirely intractable, and that better legislative maneuvering might have produced a better result.

In an era when many old beliefs have been reexamined as the expression of privilege, it’s notable that the boomer view of the Good Kennedy and the Bad Johnson has remained largely unchanged. Yet one wonders how much of this mythos is specifically shaped by the perspective of the white middle class, which shared in the cost of Johnson’s disastrous war, but gained relatively little benefit from his enfranchisement of the Black South or enormous expansion of the welfare state. Kennedy’s poetic speeches hardly substituted for the dismantling of legal apartheid.

Liberals are habitually disenchanted with Democratic presidents . Since Franklin Roosevelt, who received only intermittent approval from the left in his time, progressives have experienced their party’s control of the White House, both good and bad, as almost unmitigated despair. During his short time in office, they were mostly disgruntled with Kennedy’s performance, and not without reason. He would almost surely have joined the pantheon of disappointment and regret were it not for his assassination. The enduring Camelot halo is a testament to the power of sentiment over analysis.

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Rubenstein Center Scholarship

The Life and Presidency of John F. Kennedy

The Official 2020 White House Christmas Ornament historical essay

• William Seale Author & Historian

This photograph by White House photographer Robert Knudsen shows President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy next to the Blue Room Christmas tree. This photograph was taken in 1961 before the extensive renovations initiated by the first lady.

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The White House Historical Association’s 2020 Official White House Christmas Ornament honors John Fitzgerald Kennedy , the thirty-fifth president of the United States. The youngest president since Theodore Roosevelt , Kennedy took office in January 1961, at age 43. Before his vibrant presidency was cut short by an assassin’s bullet on November 22, 1963, he had reinvigorated the American spirit. His legacy lives on in his youthful belief in America and his faith in America’s responsibilities to the world.

With this ornament we remember President Kennedy through his posthumous official White House portrait, made in 1970 by Aaron Shikler, the artist selected by the president’s widow, Jacqueline Kennedy . The portrait, symbolic of his unfinished presidency, hangs in the White House today. Shikler recalled that Mrs. Kennedy did not want the portrait to look the way other artists had portrayed him. “I painted him with his head bowed, not because I think of him as a martyr,” Shikler said, “but because I wanted to show him as a president who was a thinker. . . . All presidential portraits have eyes that look right at you. I wanted to do something with more meaning. I hoped to show a courage that made him humble.”

The reverse of the ornament features the dates of President Kennedy’s brief term, 1961–1963, on either side of an engraving of the White House. The White House as it is today is another Kennedy legacy. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy restored the furnishings and decor of the State Rooms to the era of the early presidents and invited the public to view them in a television special. “The White House belongs to the American people,” she said. The White House Historical Association, which Mrs. Kennedy founded in 1961 continues today to fulfill the mission she envisioned: “to enhance understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment of the historic White House.” The Association remains a lasting legacy of a presidential term unfinished.

The portrait of President John F. Kennedy by Aaron Shikler in the Cross Hall on the State Floor of the White House, 2019.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1917–1963

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, born in Brookline, Massachusetts, was the second son in a prominent Irish Catholic family. His father, Joseph Kennedy, was a well-known businessman, and his mother, Rose Fitzgerald, the daughter of a U.S. congressman and mayor of Boston. The family, eventually with nine children, was close knit and political, and regarded public service as a calling. They spent summers on Cape Cod, swimming, sailing, and playing touch football, and their cottage in Hyannis Port was eventually enlarged to become the Kennedy Compound, with several additional residences. Joe Kennedy had high expectations for his children, and he encouraged his sons, especially, to be athletic and competitive. All four Kennedy sons played football at Harvard. In his junior year, John Kennedy took an extended visit to London, where his father was serving as ambassador to Great Britain. Graduating from Harvard in 1940, John expanded his senior thesis into a book, Why England Slept , which examined that country’s lack of preparation for war.

World War II had already begun, and although the United States was not yet directly involved, both John and his older brother, Joe Jr., joined the U.S. Navy in 1941. Joe went to pilot school and John received special training for patrol torpedo boats, the famous PTs. In 1943 he was sent to the South Pacific and assumed command of PT 109, with a mission to agitate and sink Japanese supply ships. On patrol the night of August 1–2, 1943, his boat was struck in the inky darkness by a Japanese destroyer. Two crew members died in the fiery collision, but eleven, one badly injured, clung to the hull until morning. Despite his own injuries, Kennedy managed to get all of them to shore and then secure their rescue, six days later, with the help of native islanders friendly to the Allies. For his courage and leadership, Kennedy was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal and a Purple Heart. He was assigned to another PT boat but contracted malaria and was sent back to the United States. During his recovery came word that his older brother, Joe Jr., had died in an airplane accident over England. Joe had been the one his father always said would be president someday.

Joe’s death changed the trajectory of John’s life. John had thought of being a writer, but at his father’s urging, in 1946 he ran for a Boston seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and won. In Congress he represented his working-class district with a strong stand for labor and unions. He also supported U.S. foreign aid and military assistance. Well-liked and well respected, he was reelected twice before winning a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1952, defeating incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge of the old Boston aristocracy.

Kennedy now had a national reputation. In the Senate he pursued his interests in foreign affairs and in history, writing a second book that won the Pulitzer Prize, Profiles in Courage , stories of eight senators who placed service to country above their careers. In 1953 he married Jacqueline Bouvier, and their first child, Caroline, was born in 1957. Consideration as a potential vice-presidential candidate at the Democratic Convention of 1956 positioned him for a run for president in 1960.

No Roman Catholic had ever won the presidency, but Kennedy’s forceful statements about placing public service over private religious affiliation proved convincing. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention he introduced what he called the New Frontier, a promise to move the nation forward by increasing economic opportunity, civil rights, and military preparedness as Cold War tensions with the communist Soviet Union escalated. Facing Republican Richard M. Nixon in the nation’s first televised debate, Kennedy appeared both poised and commanding. In November he won the presidency by a narrow majority.

Portrait by Aaron Shikler of President John F. Kennedy, 1970.

The Kennedy Administration, 1961–63

Inauguration Day dawned bright and cold following a snowstorm. Standing bare headed in the sun, the new president offered not promises but a challenge. He called on foreign adversaries to “begin anew the quest for peace” and on his “fellow Americans” to “ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

One of Kennedy’s first acts as president was to create the Peace Corps, a program that sent young people to developing nations, to live among the people they helped. In addition to technical assistance for projects in health, sanitation, and education, their objective was “to promote peace and friendship.” More than seven thousand idealistic Americans, young and old, signed up. Kennedy asked Congress for legislation that increased the minimum wage, provided health insurance for the aged, and scholarship aid for those studying medicine, dentistry, and nursing. He reinvigorated America’s space program with a commitment to landing a man on the moon, and bringing him safely back to earth, “before this decade is out.”

But several months into his administration Kennedy’s attention to domestic issues was interrupted by a foreign crisis. He had approved an Eisenhower-era plan for overthrowing Cuba’s communist dictator, Fidel Castro. But when CIA-trained Cuban exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs, they were captured. Kennedy accepted full responsibility, then turned to his predecessor for wisdom, inviting former President Dwight D. Eisenhower to Camp David. Sobered by failure, Kennedy stood firm when he met Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in June. Khrushchev sought to force the Allied powers out of Berlin, which had been divided at the end of World War II. When Kennedy would not withdraw, Khrushchev ordered a wall built between the Soviet and Allied zones of the city. Cold War tensions escalated, and a nuclear arms race resumed.

The next year brought a much more dangerous crisis. In October, when the Soviets began to install missile sites in Cuba, just 90 miles from the U.S. shores, the superpowers were brought to the brink of nuclear war. Putting the U.S. military on high alert and assembling a panel of security advisers, Kennedy considered possible responses. On October 22 he announced a quarantine of the island and sent the U.S. Navy to enforce it. As Soviet ships with supplies for the missile sites approached, the whole world was watching. At the last minute the ships turned around, and in the next days behind the scenes communications between Kennedy and Khrushchev opened a resolution. Khrushchev agreed to remove the Cuban missiles if Kennedy would promise that the United States would not invade Cuba and, in an agreement secret at the time, would remove U.S. missiles in Turkey, aimed at the Soviet heartland. On November 2 Kennedy announced that “progress is now being made toward peace in the Caribbean.”

Meanwhile Kennedy and the nation faced a series of domestic crises over civil rights. In 1954 the Supreme Court had ordered that racial segregation in schools be ended, but southern resistance was strong. Violence against protests by young people sitting in at lunch counters, riding interstate buses, and attempting to attend previously all-white state colleges led Attorney General Robert Kennedy, John Kennedy’s younger brother and closest adviser, to send in federal marshals, again and again. In June 1963, when the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, “stood in the schoolhouse door,” as he promised, to prevent African Americans from registering at the University of Alabama, President Kennedy went on television to address the issue of civil rights head on. It is not a sectional issue, he said, not a partisan issue, or even just a legal or legislative issue, but “a moral issue.” “The heart of the question,” he continued, “is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.” He called on Congress to enact legislation protecting the rights of all Americans to be served in places of public accommodation and to vote without penalty or intimidation.

Kennedy’s comprehensive civil rights bill was under debate in Congress, when, in August, a March on Washington brought a quarter of a million supporters to the National Mall. From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Joan Baez and the Freedom Singers led the crowd in “We Shall Overcome,” and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. challenged the nation “to rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed . . . ‘that all men are created equal.’” In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson shepherded the Civil Rights Act through Congress in tribute to Kennedy, and a Voting Rights Act followed the next year.

Kennedy’s confidence in the purpose of America and in Americans’ ability to solve problems seemed on the way to being realized that summer. In June, at a commencement address at American University, he announced that his topic would be “the most important on earth: world peace.” “Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I’m talking about genuine peace,” he said, “the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for all their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women—not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.” He called on Americans to “reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union,” not to give in to propaganda and distorted views that “see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.” “Let us direct our attention to our common interests,” he said, “for, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

At the end of the speech Kennedy announced negotiations under way for a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviets; it was signed in August, and a few weeks later a “hot line” was installed, a direct link between Washington and Moscow that would permit instantaneous communication between the superpowers. Visiting the Berlin Wall that summer, Kennedy repeated his themes of freedom and peace. “Freedom is indivisible,” he said. “Lift your eyes beyond the dangers to today, to the hopes of tomorrow . . . to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.”

The Kennedy Family in the White House

Not since the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt had there been little children in the White House. Caroline was three when the Kennedys moved in, and John just two months old. Photographs of them romping with their father in the Oval Office and of Caroline riding her pony, Macaroni, on the White House lawn endeared this young family to all Americans, of all political persuasions. When Khrushchev sent Caroline a white puppy, Pushinka, and when Pushinka and the family’s beloved Welsh terrier, Charlie, had puppies together, the photo ops were irresistible.

Yet Jacqueline Kennedy was protective of her children, wanting to preserve for them as normal a childhood as possible. She established a preschool for Caroline on the Third Floor of the White House and invited friends’ children to join. Always she sought to carve out a private, affectionate life for her family, even as she recognized her responsibilities as America’s first lady.

This photograph shows President John F. Kennedy with Caroline, John, Jr., and Caroline's pony, Macaroni. They stand just outside of the Oval Office, beside the Rose Garden and West Colonnade.

Summers the family spent in the Kennedy Compound on Cape Cod, with cousins and all the outdoor games that the Kennedys had always played with vigor. At other times of the year they escaped, when they could to a farm called Glen Ora, near Middleburg, Virginia, where Mrs. Kennedy, an excellent horsewoman, enjoyed the freedom of riding through open fields. Palm Beach, where Joe Kennedy had a large stucco house, was another sanctuary, and often where the Kennedys spent holidays with their many relatives.

Jacqueline Kennedy wanted a comfortable home for her family, and her first task on moving into the White House was to remake the upstairs quarters with her children in mind. A kitchen and private dining room were added, and the furnishings changed to suit the domestic life of a young family. But her lasting contributions were to the decor of the State Floor rooms , which she restored and furnished with antiques as well as some original pieces donated back to the White House with the encouragement of her advisory committee. As much as possible, she hoped the public spaces could be a repository for American fine arts and decorative arts. She pushed Congress for legislation that made certain the furnishings were not sold off again at auction, as had been the practice in the past.

She established the White House Historical Association , hired the mansion’s first curator, and edited its first guidebook—proceeds from which continue to be used to acquire furnishings and preserve the historic fabric of the White House. The Executive Residence’s historic setting on Lafayette Square led to yet another project. Together the Kennedys preserved the square as a nineteenth-century residential neighborhood, its central park a green retreat in marble Washington. Outside the Oval Office they planted a Rose Garden that was both a private retreat and a ceremonial platform.

To this elegant setting the Kennedys invited the nation’s famous writers, artists, and musicians for both formal and informal events. They wanted the White House to showcase American performing arts and to serve as a stage for symbolizing the best of America and the American presidency. Their commitment to federal support for the arts would, in the years ahead, be realized in the National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities and in the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts , built on the shore of the Potomac River in Washington.

First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy stands before television cameras in the State Dining Room during her televised tour of the White House, 1962.

The Kennedy Christmas Celebrations

For the family’s first Christmas in the White House, Jacqueline Kennedy decorated the official White House Christmas tree, set up in the Blue Room, with tiny toys, birds, sugarplum fairies, and angels that evoked Petr Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet. Thus began a tradition of White House tree decorations that carry out a specific theme. The 1962 tree, in the North Entrance, continued the children’s theme with brightly wrapped packages, candy canes, gingerbread cookies, and straw ornaments made by disabled and senior citizens from across the United States. Mrs. Kennedy visited a local children’s hospital to give presents to sick children who would not be home for Christmas. The Kennedys generally traveled to Palm Beach for Christmas Day, where members of the large extended family often gathered. The children hung stockings and put on Christmas pageants, and all went to Christmas Mass together. In 1962 the personal gifts were chosen with great care. Knowing her love of French art, John Kennedy gave his wife a drawing by the French Impressionist Pierre Auguste Renoir. Knowing his love of the sea, Jacqueline Kennedy gave her husband a piece of scrimshaw carved with the Presidential Seal. Caroline wanted a doll, and John a helicopter.

Planning for Christmas 1963 was almost completed by November 21, when John and Jacqueline Kennedy flew to Texas for a three-day visit. The annual Christmas card was already printed—a color photograph of an eighteenth-century crèche that was displayed for the holidays in the East Room— and cards for thirty friends and supporters had been signed. John Kennedy had purchased a fur coverlet as a present for his wife, and he had learned to speak enough French to surprise her on Christmas Day.

The Kennedy Legacy

News of Kennedy’s death shocked Americans and shook the entire world. Leaders from more than ninety nations attended the funeral . It was too soon to speak of a legacy, but it is clear now that the Kennedys changed the character of the White House forever. John Kennedy’s daring and optimism inspired Americans to take pride in their achievements and to commit to public service. Kennedy was president in a dangerous time, and his leadership, both clear-eyed and calm, worked always toward peace.

President John F. Kennedy's flag-draped casket is seen carried on a horse-drawn caisson as his funeral procession leaves the White House, 1963.

After she left the White House, Jacqueline Kennedy sought the private life she had always wanted, for herself and her children. She returned only once , on February 3, 1971, privately and in secret, to view the official portraits by Aaron Shikler. “The day I always dreaded,” she wrote in a thank-you to First Lady Pat Nixon , “turned out to be one of the most precious ones I spent with my children.”

This was originally published on February 17, 2020

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An Idol and Once a President: John F. Kennedy at 100

I am grateful to Edward Linenthal for suggesting I write this essay, to Beth Horowitz and Fredrik Logevall for critical readings of a draft, to Stephen Andrews and the two anonymous readers for the JAH for their helpful suggestions, and to Cynthia Gwynne Yaudes for her scrupulous copyediting.

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Michael Kazin, An Idol and Once a President: John F. Kennedy at 100, Journal of American History , Volume 104, Issue 3, December 2017, Pages 707–726, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jax315

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What he was, he was: What he is fated to become Depends on us. –W. H. Auden, from “Elegy for J.F.K.”

Political historians who seek to evaluate John F. Kennedy's life, career, and legacy face a dilemma: for almost everyone else, his legendary persona overwhelms what he accomplished as a politician. That has been true since his death, over five decades ago, and it is still true now, a full century after his birth. Kennedy remains one of the more familiar, admired, and symbolically resonant figures in U.S. history. According to opinion polls, Americans consider him one of the “greatest” presidents since Abraham Lincoln. Panels of professional historians rank him lower but still in the top ten of past chief executives, roughly equal to Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan—both of whom served two full terms. Conversely, most Americans who grew up long after JFK died appear less smitten by a president they know only through recycled images. For them, he can never inspire the passion, or hatred, that the last three presidents—Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama—provoke. The mystery surrounding JFK 's assassination seems to overshadow what he did or failed to accomplish as president. 1

Yet Kennedy's prominence in a mass culture saturated with celebrities, past and present, has not waned to any great degree. Hundreds of popular and scholarly volumes continue to be published about every aspect of his life and those of his immediate family, particularly on dates such as the fiftieth anniversary of his assassination in 2013. “So few years in the nation's highest office—yet so many books,” the Washington Post commented that fall. A recent novel about his assassination by Stephen King and a narrative about the same event by Bill O'Reilly both rose to the top of the best-seller list. As of 2015, no fewer than twenty-seven different actors had portrayed JFK on screen. A well-designed Web site is devoted to chronicling what Kennedy did every day of his life, WJFK-FM is one of the more popular radio stations in the nation's capital (broadcasting the Washington Nationals' games), and some 1,300 memorials to him exist around the world—including an impressive museum on the floor of the building in Dallas where Lee Harvey Oswald fired his fateful shots. Of course, no massive marble statue of the thirty-fifth president sits inside a neoclassical temple on the Washington Mall, while a memorial, designed by Frank Gehry, to his predecessor in the White House, Dwight D. Eisenhower, will soon be built just a block from “America's front yard.” But as many as 4 million people still visit Arlington National Cemetery each year, where JFK 's gravesite is the most famous attraction—and is the only one of the 400,000 graves there lit by an eternal flame. 2

Yet JFK 's actual influence on U.S. and world affairs is anything but eternal. To borrow from the title of Robert Dallek's best-selling 2003 biography, Kennedy's most important actions as president, like his life itself, were largely unfinished. He spent most of his time and political capital waging and, at critical times, negotiating a Cold War that has long since ended. He committed his government to help defeat a growing Communist-led insurgency in South Vietnam but died before he could decide whether to send U.S. combat troops to back up that pledge. He initiated policies to advance civil rights, reduce poverty, and fund medical care for the elderly. But it was left to Lyndon B. Johnson—his wily, if uncharismatic successor—to push all of them (and much more) through Congress. 3

Painted by an unknown artist, this mural, displayed at Abundant Life Ministries Church in Oakland, California, shows John F. Kennedy with Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Jesus Christ. Photo by Camilo J. Vergara. Courtesy Library of Congress .

How does one balance this limited record against the persistence of the saga of a celebrity politician whom many Americans have never stopped celebrating? In the preface to his biography of JFK , Dallek vowed “to penetrate the veneer of glamour and charm to reconstruct the real man or as close to it as possible.” But if that veneer is essential to explaining why no president since Kennedy has meant so much to so many different people, penetrating it may, albeit unintentionally, minimize the import of his postmortem fate. As William Leuchtenburg wrote presciently in 1983, “in the end the efforts of the historians are not likely to have a very considerable effect on Kennedy's reputation, for he has already become part not of history but of myth.” 4

The only sensible approach to this problem, it seems to me, is to evaluate JFK 's achievements and his myth together, to understand how each abetted the other. Kennedy is hardly the first American president to be enrobed, or trapped, in legend soon after his death. “In search of modern fame,” wrote Leo Braudy in his 1986 study The Frenzy of Renown , “we often enter a world of obvious fiction, in which all blemishes are smoothed and all wounds healed. It is the social vision of a love that absolves the loved one of fault, restoring integrity and wholeness.” 5

Yet the images of few presidents have survived through history without sprouting blemishes and/or losing their prominence in popular memory. Major changes in what the Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci called the “common sense” of society—its consensual values and ideas—can turn heroes into, if not villains, severely flawed individuals. Consider what the recognition of slavery's centrality to America's past has done to the reputations of Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, esteemed, until the 1960s, as the founding fathers of the Democrats, the “party of the people.” For historians, George Washington still ranks as one of the two or three greatest presidents, notwithstanding the fact that he owned more than one hundred slaves. But for most Americans, he is little more than the first man to hold that office and, of course, the name on the imposing obelisk on the National Mall and the nation's capital. According to one teacher who studied his image among young people in the 1990s, he “remains the wooden expression on the dollar bill, a day off from school, and the consumerism of Washington's Birthday sales.” Two decades later, it is unlikely that his presence has grown in the hearts and minds of Americans; Washington no longer even has a February holiday to his name. 6

Even Lincoln has been subject to marked shifts of posthumous fortune. During the Gilded Age, according to the sociologist Barry Schwartz, regional “resentments over his waging [civil] war diminished his prestige.” Then, in the early twentieth century, Lincoln was transformed into a paragon of both progressive idealism and sectional reconciliation, honored by all. As the black freedom movement gathered steam by the midcentury, Lincoln was refashioned again into a herald of racial emancipation, if not always a consistent one. Recognizing that fact, Jacqueline Kennedy, who viewed her husband as another martyr to the same cause, designed his funeral to resemble closely that of the sixteenth president, even having his coffin “carried by the same horse-drawn caisson and placed on the same catafalque” as were Lincoln's remains. “Alive, the young Kennedy seemed anything but a great president;” observes Schwartz, “dead, he became Lincoln's equal.” 7

While that saintly aura no longer surrounds Kennedy, neither has his image ever become as negative as Lincoln's once was for white southerners or as tarnished as those of Jefferson and Jackson have become for contemporary Democrats of all races. State parties are rapidly changing the name of their annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners, long a staple of the Democrats' fundraising apparatus. But no one is about to suggest changing the name of New York City's international airport or of the over one hundred John F. Kennedy schools that dot the nation. He remains a mostly pleasant fixture in American popular memory, albeit with an allure that seems likely to fade away gently over time. 8

In this review essay, I cannot touch on every topic in the universe of Kennedy studies, where countless scholars, journalists, and passionate amateurs continue to toil. My focus is on four issues—sexuality, political culture, civil rights, and the Vietnam War—that have always been and remain central to this vibrant corner of political and historical commentary.

To understand the intertwining of celebrity and politics, attention should be paid to the three major phases of Kennedy's life and afterlife: his pre-presidential years, his administration of just over one thousand days, the unceasing debate about who assassinated him and why, and the work his memory does in America's public life and the imagination(s) of its inhabitants. These roughly correspond to what Braudy calls the four enduring “elements” of fame: “a person and an accomplishment, their immediate publicity, and what posterity has thought about them since.” 9

John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, with family members and friends, are shown here on their wedding day, September 12, 1953. Photo by Toni Frissell. Courtesy Library of Congress .

Two themes stand out in the writing about Kennedy's life, presidency, and mythic ­afterlife: the intertwining of cultural and political analyses and the move away from polarized assessments of what he accomplished. Treatments of JFK as either fallen hero or aggressive failure have been largely superseded by more nuanced, if undramatic, portraits. Whether that is counted as an emotional loss or a scholarly gain is up to readers.

To begin with a note of professorial humility: As a group, the academic historians who have written about JFK have no greater claim to wisdom than do the better novelists, journalists, and filmmakers who have sold their wares in the recession-proof marketplace of Kennedyana. Certainly, scholars are more interested in and adept at embedding their man in historical contexts—of Cold War liberalism and the New Deal order, in particular. But few political historians probe deeply into JFK 's emotional resonance; while scholars of cultural studies tend to focus on one aspect of his life and/or the uses of his memory and view the stuff of policy making as epiphenomena, unworthy of consideration on its own terms.

Some of the most wide-ranging, eloquent, and influential works about Kennedy have come from writers uninhibited by disciplinary boundaries and the academic's fondness for excessive qualification and rigorous citations. Norman Mailer's long essay “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” published in Esquire just before the 1960 election, remains a masterpiece of commentary on the evolving culture of politics in a consumer society. “The Democrats,” he wrote about the party's convention in Los Angeles that summer, “were going to nominate a man who, no matter how serious his political dedication might be, was indisputably and willy-nilly going to be seen as a great box-office actor, and the consequences of that were staggering and not at all easy to calculate.” 10

David Halberstam's sweeping appraisal of Kennedy and his foreign policy team—the “best and the brightest” who half-leaped, half-stumbled into a quagmire in Indochina—has lost none of its sting since its publication in 1972. The journalist whose reporting on the war a decade earlier had drawn the ire of the president wrote that Kennedy's dispatch of nearly seventeen thousand U.S. advisers “changed the commitment without changing the war, or the problems which had caused it.” He was equally adept at pointing out how poorly equipped JFK and his top aides, so confident in their brilliance and efficiency, were to understand the thinking of the enemies they faced in a peasant nation long ruled by outsiders. Halberstam observed about Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara that as someone “whose only real experience had been in dealing with the second largest automobile empire in the world [Ford Motor Company], producing huge Western vehicles,” he “was the last man to understand and measure the problems of a people looking for their political freedom.” 11

In 1982 Garry Wills wrote a scathing yet gracefully crafted critique of JFK 's politics and personality, placing both firmly in the context of his family history. The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power was one of the first books to condemn its subject as a self-centered sex addict. “He had this terrible itch,” wrote Wills, “that needed constant scratching, and the attention was on the itch, not on the replaceable scratchers.” He also scorned JFK for lying about his authorship of Profiles of Courage (the 1956 book that won a Pulitzer Prize for History and did much to make his reputation as an intellectual in politics), blamed the 1962 Cuban missile crisis on American arrogance, and compared Kennedy's speeches unfavorably to those of Martin Luther King Jr. 12

Although Halberstam and Wills are exceptional writers, their negative portrayals were hardly unusual at the time their works were published. By the 1970s, the liberal triumphalism of Kennedy's administration had given way to failure abroad, and economic crisis and the rise of a conservative movement at home. Liberal intellectuals seeking to explain what had gone wrong inevitably sought to puncture the Camelot myth that First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy had initiated soon after her husband's death and that JFK 's former aides Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Theodore Sorensen had burnished with best-selling accounts that appeared in 1965, before the bloom had faded from the rose. A two-volume biography by Herbert S. Parmet, completed in 1983, described JFK as ineffective in dealing with Congress and arrogant in vowing to export democracy, American-style, to Vietnam and elsewhere in the world—a promise he could never fulfill. Parmet did give Kennedy credit for “establish[ing] a new style and tone for the presidency, one that evoked national pride and hope.” But he also curtly dismissed the beauty and elegance of the president and his wife as distractions from the hard work of governing. “Glamour overshadowed quality,” concluded Parmet. “That made his limitations all the more painful.” 13

The backlash literature led, just as inevitably, to a handful of explicitly defensive works. In 1991 the political scientist Irving Bernstein, best known as the author of landmark works on modern labor history, wrote a policy-heavy study of Kennedy's term in office, making the case that JFK “was a very successful president” and that “the revisionists were dead wrong.” Three years earlier, David Burner, in a skillful brief biography, had emphasized how often politicians from both major parties evoked Kennedy's soaring, idealistic rhetoric during an era one leading Democrat said was “a call to greatness” when “the country [was] feeling young and good about itself.” Both authors meant to redress the balance, to remind readers why most Americans had never lost their esteem for the thirty-fifth president and why they were justified in feeling that way. 14

During the past two decades, however, both harsh critiques and book-length encomia about JFK have largely gone out of fashion, at least among professional historians. No scholar has gushed over Kennedy the way Schlesinger famously did in 1965—not that some authors do not continue to lay wreaths at his shrine. In 2008, two years before his death, Sorensen published an entirely uncritical memoir about his relationship with JFK . The former “counselor” even explained away his erstwhile boss's rampant promiscuity by stating that, while he “had no firsthand knowledge” of it, he was sure the president “never permitted the pursuit of private pleasure to interfere with public duty.” Other writers promise a fresh approach to understanding JFK that turns out to be little more than an intriguing assertion. Take, for instance, Thurston Clarke's 2013 book about Kennedy's “last hundred days.” According to Clarke, JFK , in the months before his fateful trip to Dallas, was becoming a “great” president as well as a faithful husband. But Clarke provides no convincing evidence for either claim. 15

In contrast, most scholars who have written about Kennedy in recent years portray him neither as a vigorous, unblemished hero nor as an overhyped failure. They tend, instead, to express a qualified admiration for how he struggled with the obstacles—personal and political—he confronted throughout his life. In so doing, they open up room for debate about such matters as JFK 's stand on civil rights and his responsibility for the Vietnam War—and his legacy in general. This change is due, in part, to an ebbing of passions on all sides that grew out of what Maurice Isserman and I have called “the civil war of the 1960s.” In part, it also mirrors a process of reflection in which nearly every prominent figure begins, over time, to be analyzed in more nuanced, complex, and qualified terms. Of course, new sources, such as the transcripts of taped conversations in the Oval Office during the Cuban missile crisis, can play a part in this reexamination. But no new facts about JFK have reversed any significant opinion widely shared by either scholars or historically minded journalists. As with other subjects of keen popular and academic interest, historians do not require an empirical breakthrough to refine and alter their interpretations. 16

About JFK 's life before he became president, a consensus narrative has emerged: a callow, even “reckless” young man slowly matures, with the indispensable aid of his wealthy father's money, advice, and contacts, into a cautious politician with a magnetic style. Book after book repeats essentially the same narrative, in which published texts of either contemporary or personal history play a big role: just after graduating from Harvard University, Kennedy, with the help of Arthur Krock of the New York Times , an associate of his father, revises his senior thesis into the popular book Why England Slept . He then goes off to war in the Pacific, where, due to a combination of bad luck and bad decisions, the patrol boat he commands is torpedoed by a Japanese destroyer. But Kennedy heroically rescues an injured crew member, and John Hersey turns this into a major article in the New Yorker (later Robert J. Donovan writes a best-selling book about the event). In 1946 that story helps sell the twenty-eight-year-old son of privilege to voters in the eleventh congressional district of Massachusetts. Just six years later, bored as a House member with little seniority, Kennedy runs for the Senate against Henry Cabot Lodge, a fellow scion of wealth and status. His narrow victory, in a year when Republicans swept into the White House and took control of both houses of Congress, makes him a rising young star. That victory, coupled with the publication and great success of Profiles in Courage , got JFK and his growing entourage thinking seriously about a future run for the White House. 17

Some debate does continue, however, about the substance of the charges critics such as Wills have made about that prize-winning text, a collection of biographical essays about eight senators—from John Quincy Adams to Robert Taft—who stuck to their principles against fierce opposition. In his 2008 memoir Sorensen gives a rather tortured defense of Kennedy's authorship. The speechwriter admits he “did a first draft of most chapters,” which JFK then revised and was “intimately involved at each stage” of the book's creation. He mentions two academics—one, Jules Davids, a former teacher of Jacqueline Kennedy—who helped write the manuscript. Yet Sorensen still insists that the young senator deserved to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize as its sole author. In his biography, Dallek seeks a middle ground: he mentions all the help Kennedy received with research and early drafts, while confirming that the main ideas were his own. “Jack did more on the book than some later critics believed,” writes Dallek, “but less than the term author normally connotes.” Profiles in Courage , he concludes, “was more the work of a ‘committee’ than of any one person.” 18

By the 1950s, contemporary Americans were accustomed to learning that ghostwriters were the true authors of many a volume that carried the name of a well-known politician or a famous individual in business or entertainment. But the prestigious prize that JFK won for Profiles in Courage , along with the 2 million copies the book had sold by the time he became president, did much to bring him renown as a different type of politician, one prepared to emulate the courage of his senatorial forebears and to do so in vivid, dramatic prose. It won him a coveted spot during the 1956 Democratic National Convention, where he came close to being nominated for vice president. Yet the controversy takes up little space in recent studies of the man and what he did or not achieve. This may reveal a certain cynicism from historians; imagine how we would react if a politician today won such a high intellectual honor for a book he merely conceived and then edited. Or, perhaps JFK 's aura still outshines such a career-building faux pas. 19

A similarly balanced judgment applies to the problem of analyzing Kennedy's manic sex life, a topic as familiar as any other about the man. Some historians have explained, if not excused, his behavior by referring to the fact that Kennedy suffered from one childhood illness after another and, as an adult, would have been crippled if he had not taken strong medications every day for Addison's disease and a chronically bad back. “A sense of his mortality may … have continued to drive Jack's incessant skirt-chasing,” writes Dallek, whose biography provides the fullest medical history of JFK to date. David Nasaw, in his recent biography of Joseph P. Kennedy, argues that Jack's ailments drew him closer to his father, who also had dozens of extramarital affairs. Once, according to the literary historian John Hellmann, JFK “came home from school to find that his father had laid out pornographic magazines over his bed, open to pictures of women's genitalia.” However extreme, JFK 's libidinal desires would not be allowed to jeopardize a future political career. In 1942 the “patriarch” pressured his son, who was then twenty-five, to abandon a relationship with Inga Arvad, a beautiful older Danish journalist who had been divorced, was a Protestant, and had written favorable pieces about leading Nazis. 20

Curiously, no historian of women or gender has attempted a study of Kennedy's personal life—or examined the fate of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women he took to bed from his teenage years to days before his fateful trip to Dallas. Writers about this subject—nearly all men—focus on JFK 's good fortune to be in the White House when there existed an unwritten rule among political journalists—another nearly all-male cohort at the time—to keep such stories private. The political scientist Larry Sabato is probably correct, as he wrote in 2013, that “had a single one of his dalliances become public, history would have recorded that John Kennedy and not Richard Nixon was the first president to resign in disgrace.” 21

Part of the reluctance to probe JFK 's intimate relationships with women may be that none of his many bed partners has rued the time she spent with him, at least not for publication. The actress Angie Dickinson joked that having sex with Kennedy was “the most memorable fifteen seconds of my life.” Her quip, in effect, confirms Garry Wills's description but declines to condemn it. In her 2012 memoir, Mimi Alford also eschews resentment toward the president, who aggressively took her virginity when she was a White House intern of just nineteen. Kennedy did not pause to obtain her consent—“short of screaming, I doubt if I could have done anything to thwart his intentions.” Months later, he insisted that Alford fellate one of his closest aides in the White House swimming pool while the president watched. Still, Alford did have an extended affair with JFK , and her tone in the memoir is suffused with wonder and affection rather than anger. 22

Any historian who ventures into this controversial, titillating aspect of Kennedy's life will face the high and complex hurdles of both reliable sources and psychological analysis. Not much evidence exists about JFK 's relationship with his wife, in or away from the marriage bed. After he died, Jacqueline Kennedy did tell an interviewer that JFK curtly told her not to ask him about matters of policy; therefore, she resolved not to be “a distraction” but to provide “a climate of affection and comfort and détente when he came home.” Perhaps it is not surprising that few scholars have taken the leap. 23

Far more has been written about JFK 's political views when he ran for president in 1960. Accounts have run along the same lines since the time of the battle for the nomination itself. In his memorable essay about the Democratic National Convention, Mailer mentioned, in passing, Kennedy's “good, sound, conventional liberal record,” that “his public mind was too conventional,” and that, in the “full spectrum” of American politics at the time, the differences he had with Richard M. Nixon “would be minor.” Only the handsome senator's dazzling style set him apart. The historians G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot essentially echoed that view in their 2008 narrative about the reform era of the 1960s: “While Kennedy's credentials as a liberal were never very impressive in his pre-presidential years,” they wrote, he did believe in an active federal government that would “get the country moving again,” as he vowed in his acceptance speech. 24

The two chief executives who preceded him—one a liberal Democrat, the other a centrist Republican—had both employed the government to promote economic growth and resist Communism abroad. JFK criticized the Eisenhower administration for not doing enough on either count. Since he was running against the Republican vice president, this was an obvious strategy. But in doing so, he only affirmed that postwar consensus. And his exceedingly narrow victory in the November election was a good argument for essentially staying the course. 25

However, important themes in Kennedy's rhetoric and in the bracing way he delivered it promised something quite different, if more problematic: Americans, led by an energetic, educated, and altruistic elite, could break decisively with the feeble, failing status quo. As Mailer put it, JFK “would come to power in a year when America was in danger of drifting into a profound decline.” Thus, in one of the televised debates with Nixon, the Democrat accused the Eisenhower administration of allowing the United States to fall behind the Soviet Union in nuclear armaments. And in the deathless lines of the inaugural address, crafted largely by Sorensen, the new president, proving his fortitude by wearing no topcoat on a frigid day, promised “to pay any price” for “the survival of success and liberty” and asked Americans what “you can do for your country” rather what it would do for them. 26

As recent scholars have made clear, whatever “crisis” or “decline” that afflicted the United States was, in historical context, a decidedly minor one. The gross national product, manufacturing output, and consumer spending had risen markedly since the end of World War II—despite the sharp recession of 1958. As Robert Collins points out, “By any standard, either comparative or absolute, the income distribution in the United States remained skewed”; Sweden, the United Kingdom, and other welfare states had achieved greater social and economic equality. But union members who made up about one-third of the private sector work force were doing better than ever; while most Americans, for the first time in history, considered themselves part of the “middle class.” Cracks in the “golden age” had begun to appear: deindustrialization was beginning to strip away good jobs from manufacturing hubs such as Detroit and in textile towns from New England to the Carolinas. But neither runaway shops nor automation had yet risen to the level of a concern or a problem to most wage earners. And the “missile gap,” which JFK deplored during the 1960 campaign, should have worried Soviet leaders instead of their counterparts in the White House and the Pentagon. In fact, the United States had more intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as an advantage in most other types of nuclear weapons. 27

Yet, Kennedy's oratory and style obviously struck a chord with millions of Americans and was one reason he quickly gained enthusiastic support, even among many who had not voted to put him in the White House. The expansion of higher education in the 1950s had something to do with it. As the literature scholar Sean McCann points out in a 2015 essay, the rapid growth of universities, especially public ones, “had been justified to the public on the idea that it would create a talented new leadership class capable of advancing global power.” But the members of this new meritocracy—like their counterparts elsewhere in the industrialized world—also wanted to put ideals nurtured in the classroom to use in their own societies. Richard Goodwin later wrote that he and fellow young Kennedy aides believed they belonged to a “democratic nobility” that would cut through sclerotic, boring bureaucracies and the tangle of interest groups to create a freer society that would improve the quality of Americans' lives, not merely enable them to purchase a bigger house stuffed with more commodities. Most older citizens had neither the time, the credentials, nor perhaps even the desire to attend college. Still, many seemed to warm to the idea articulated by JFK , which thrilled upwardly mobile young people, that politics could mean something larger and better than waging a Cold War and swelling the macroeconomy. Kennedy's top advisers, nearly all close to his age, also drove home this point. 28

Ironically, the cause to which liberal idealists outside the administration soon gave their hearts and minds was one Kennedy himself largely sought to avoid or finesse. Since the 1960s, the study of the modern black freedom movement—whether its “long” history since the 1930s or its classic phase “from Montgomery to Memphis”—has become one of the most popular and contentious fields in our discipline. But nearly all those who engage it agree that, until the last six months of his life, JFK was largely a bystander in the bourgeoning struggle against Jim Crow. He made sure, writes Julian Zelizer, not “to put civil rights anywhere near the top of his legislative agenda for 1961 and 1962” and to make slow, quiet progress through executive actions and the federal judiciary (particularly the Warren Court and southern judges appointed by Dwight D. Eisenhower). 29

Some scholars blame this reticence on the president's political judgment that the Dixie Democrats who controlled key committees in Congress would never allow a serious civil rights bill to reach the floor of either house. Others point out that Kennedy had failed to mention the issue in his inaugural address and was too preoccupied with global problems to expend political capital on so explosive a matter—one that could seriously jeopardize his chances of reelection. 30

However, the president's decision in 1963 to propose a civil rights bill to Congress tends to overshadow the narrative of his earlier reluctance. According to Thurston Clarke, who echoes the conventional wisdom among Kennedy admirers, the decision marked “a decisive break from the past” and showed that, like the senators he had lauded in Profiles in Courage , he was willing to sacrifice his own career to advance this great “moral issue.” In his last one hundred days JFK was allegedly growing in office, living up to the promise of a better America on which he had won a narrow victory three years before. 31

Few other contemporary historians are so charitable. They document that JFK took action only after Americans saw on television the all-white police force of Birmingham, Alabama, assaulting young black demonstrators on the streets of the city and only after Alabama governor George Wallace, in 1963, symbolically defied a court order to desegregate the state university. But, as drama, Kennedy's eloquent speech on June 11 of that year—mostly drafted by Sorensen—which asked the rhetorical question “Are we to say … that this is a land of the free except for the Negroes” is far more memorable than his two years of silent stalling. Welcoming Martin Luther King Jr. and his fellow movement leaders to the White House after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28 was another shrewd piece of political stagecraft. 32

In this August 28, 1963, photo, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, Walter Reuther, and other civil rights leaders talk with reporters following a meeting with President John F. Kennedy after taking part in the March on Washington. Photo by Warren K. Leffler. Courtesy Library of Congress .

Evaluations of Kennedy's foreign policy reveal a similar ambivalence, although with different causes. Thomas G. Paterson wrote in 1989 about JFK 's legacy: he was “both confrontationist and conciliator, hawk and dove, decisive leader and hesitant improviser, hyperbolic politician and prudent diplomat, idealist and pragmatist, glorious hero and flawed man of dubious character.” Even as he decided to make a stand for civil rights, the president continued to view an aggressive engagement in the Cold War and the regional conflicts that, in his view, arose from it, as his primary responsibility and, often, his most urgent duty. He frequently told his White House advisers, “domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.” 33

Of course, the latter prediction came close to becoming reality during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962. Wills and other skeptics once questioned why Kennedy objected so strongly to the midrange missiles the Soviets planned to install in Cuba at a time when the United States had equivalent weapons stationed on bases in Turkey, its North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally, within range of the largest cities in the Soviet Union. “We are not like other nations,” Wills wrote sarcastically. “We can be trusted to use our power virtuously. Our missiles were not offensive because they were ours .” 34

Now, with the Cold War long over, most scholars skirt the question of moral equivalence and credit JFK for avoiding an imminent disaster that would have killed tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of people. In a recent study based on the once-secret White House tape recordings made during the crisis, Sheldon Stern concludes that the president “often stood virtually alone against warlike counsel” from his top advisers, including his brother Robert F. Kennedy, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff and most leaders of Congress. After the danger of nuclear confrontation had passed, JFK was still determined “to undermine the Cuban revolution and get rid of Fidel Castro.” 35

The liveliest debate about Kennedy's foreign policy continues to be about Vietnam—as it has been since The Best and the Brightest appeared while Americans were still fighting in that country. In 1972 Halberstam reported that, in the months before his murder, JFK “privately expressed a nagging doubt” about whether a victory by the Saigon government was possible, even if large numbers of U.S. troops were dispatched to prop up that government. Yet the president said nothing like that in public and still “failed to deal with Vietnam as a political problem.” So Halberstam thought it inevitable that Johnson did what he thought was necessary to win the war, leading to the deaths of at least 2 million people and an utter debacle for the reputation of the United States in the world. 36

Yet, as with other key aspects of Kennedy's presidency, an attitude of uncertainty, a careful if often-inconclusive weighing of opinions and evidence, has replaced the tone of censure that Halberstam shared with other liberal and radical intellectuals in the early 1970s. It is, of course, impossible to know for sure what policy JFK would have pursued in Vietnam. As Fredrik Logevall made clear in Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam , Johnson did not make the fateful decision to Americanize the war until after his landslide reelection in 1964. And most of those who counseled him to take that step had also served his martyred predecessor. But the lack of certainty has not prevented either popular authors such as Stephen King or academic historians from making the answer to that unknowable question one of the central issues about his presidency. 37

In 2005 a group of scholars, journalists, and erstwhile policy makers spent three days at a retreat dedicated, with the help of shared documents, to examining the matter. They were wise enough not to seek consensus. The answers ran the gamut from those such as Frances Fitzgerald's—that Kennedy would have been unable “to restrain the U.S. military and civilian hawks”—to James K. Galbraith's—that JFK had already indicated he would withdraw the military advisers he had sent there earlier in his administration. The three compilers of the 2009 volume that resulted from the meeting appear to signal their own opinion by inviting Logevall, one of the participants, to write the foreword and by giving him more space than others to elaborate his views. As in his earlier book, Logevall argued that Kennedy “was always ambivalent about the war and expressed a strong opposition to ground troops.” The president, he added, would probably have delayed a decision about escalation until his second term, when he would have faced little political risk for “losing Indochina.” 38

The British historian Lawrence Freedman was not present at that conference and, in his 2000 book Kennedy's Wars , refrains from indulging in “virtual history.” One should not blame JFK , he contends, for a failure that took place after he died. In Indochina, as in Cuba and a divided Germany, notes Freedman, “his wars largely went no further than contingency plans, fought in prospect, without the trauma, drama, and heartache of real wars.” It is a sensible position, a reminder that events that took place after November 22, 1963, would surely have altered Kennedy's thinking about what to do in Vietnam if he had survived. 39

Remarkably, even authors who now stand at opposite ideological poles are capable of praising Kennedy's foreign policy and agreeing about what he intended to do in Vietnam. Those “close to” the president, writes Ira Stoll in a laudatory book with the provocative title JFK , Conservative , all testified that he would have withdrawn U.S. forces instead of dispatching hundreds of thousands more to advance a hopeless cause. Citing some of the same sources, the stalwart leftists Oliver Stone (the filmmaker) and Peter Kuznick (an academic historian) claim, in what is otherwise an unqualified condemnation of American foreign policy from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama, that Kennedy would have begun that withdrawal quite soon after the 1964 election. Alas, after his death, they contend, “the torch was passed back to an old generation” that “would systematically destroy the promise of the Kennedy years as they returned the country to war and repression.” 40

Stoll's JFK bears no other resemblance to the man portrayed by Stone and Kuznick or vice versa. The conservative writer praises him for preaching an unyielding opposition to Communism everywhere else in the world, forcing Soviet leaders on the defensive in a way that presaged the tough posture of President Reagan two decades later. But Stoll's presumption of the sagacity of the thirty-fifth chief executive is the same as that of his radical counterparts. For different reasons, their JFK could do no wrong. 41

Neither presentation is convincing, since both Stoll and Stone and Kuznick cite only documents that support their arguments. Still, they suggest the breadth of regard, if not affection, for a man who, as a living president, was scorned by conservatives such as Reagan for advancing “socialism” and by the young leftists of Students for a Democratic Society as the chieftain of a “warfare state.” Such right-wing Republicans as Peggy Noonan and Mike Pence fondly recall their Catholic family's “love,” even “worship,” of JFK . I can testify that a similar emotion endures among Jewish children raised by liberal parents in the early 1960s. 42

Taken shortly before John F. Kennedy's assassination, this photo shows JFK , Jacqueline Kennedy, Texas governor John Connally, and his wife, Nellie Connally, embarking on the fateful motorcade ride in Dallas, on November 22, 1963. Photo by Victor Hugo King. Courtesy Library of Congress .

The assassination of this president—like that of Lincoln 102 years before—has always resisted the kind of nuanced, ambivalent treatments that have become common in recent years about nearly every aspect of what he did while he was alive. Instead of political and cultural analyses, embedded in webs of context, hundreds of writers and a handful of filmmakers engorge themselves on all manner of conspiracy theories, based on details large and small, real, inflated, or invented. The more popular suspects have included the Mafia, Fidel Castro, the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ), the Federal Bureau of Investigation ( FBI ), Johnson, high-ranking generals, wealthy right-wing Texans, and even the future Watergate burglars. One recent self-published book by James D. Norvell, a former naval officer and attorney, contends that all these parties were part of a massive and brilliantly coordinated plot. He claims that “a virtual firing squad” of CIA agents “stationed in six different nests” in and around Dealey Plaza in Dallas carried out the murder—with the financial and/or logistic aid of such figures as FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, then–Vice President Lyndon Johnson, and various “prominent Mafia thugs and Texas business magnates.” 43

Part of the enduring appeal of the assassination is transhistorical. Who killed JFK and why is a murder mystery of undeniable significance; one never learns, with any certainty, who did it. This inspires a minination of private detectives to chase leads that always go cold. Of course, that has not prevented a large majority of Americans from believing that Lee Harvey Oswald, a deeply unhappy twenty-four-year-old who failed at school, work, marriage, and political activism, could not have been the sole killer of a man so mighty and beloved. Stone's wildly popular, if empirically absurd, 1991 film about the assassination both revealed and advanced disbelief in the finding of the Warren Commission and helped open some files about the murder while inspiring a multiauthor forum in the American Historical Review —the first time the discipline's flagship journal had ever featured so lengthy a discussion about a film. 44

Not all the speculative sleuthing has been illogical, of course. Several years ago, the journalist Philip Shenon learned new details of a trip Oswald took to Mexico City in late September and early October 1963, where he had an affair with a low-level Cuban agent and may have decided to kill JFK as revenge for the administration's secret campaign to topple Castro's revolution and assassinate its leader. Shenon made this story the centerpiece of a 2013 book of over six hundred pages, accusing officials at the CIA and the FBI of covering up that trip as well as other details about Oswald and his Cuban connection “before it could reach the [Warren] commission.” His point is not to deny that Oswald was the sole assassin but to question what motivated him to commit the murder. As the journalist Max Holland wrote in 1994, “If the word ‘conspiracy’ must be uttered in the same breath as ‘Kennedy assassination,’ the only one that existed was the conspiracy to kill Castro and then keep that effort secret after November 22.” Self-appointed assassination detectives will continue to search and conjecture, but after more than a half century, the possibility of truly discovering whether a conspiracy existed is quickly fading. 45

Yet there is still much to be understood about so many Americans' ongoing fascination, even obsession, with what occurred that afternoon in Dallas and why. The conventional wisdom, which I have repeated elsewhere, remains that Kennedy—and his young family—epitomized the grace, elegance, vigor, and intelligence that Americans crave in a president. Only someone with no access to a television or radio missed the nonstop coverage of his murder and that of Oswald two days later. It was the last such expression of unified grief in America until the attacks of September 11, 2001. Since JFK 's murder, U.S. politics, in the perception of many, became more sharply divided, the nation weaker at home and abroad, and presidents unable to stop the decline. As Wills wrote in 1982, JFK “did not so much elevate the office [of president] as cripple those who held it after him. His legend has haunted them; his light has cast them in shadow.” Thus, the persistent esteem for Kennedy and continuing suspicion about the motives of the powerful men and political institutions that survived him keep fueling the zeal of assassination buffs and the skepticism of most Americans. 46

But to probe the cultural meaning of this obsession requires more attention to cultural context. Just before the golden anniversary of the assassination, Adam Gopnik, a gifted essayist in the mold of Mailer and Wills, attempted to do just that in the New Yorker . He recalled the “passionate chaos” of the days following the event and warned historians not to be “cynical about it in retrospect.” He pointed out that the world of conspiracy studies was one refashioned by movements of “truthers and birthers and moon walkers” in the succeeding decades. It is, wrote Gopnik, paraphrasing Richard Hofstadter, “the old American paranoid style … [that] married pseudoscience and became articulate, academic, systematized, and loud .” The critic also suggested how Oswald's squalid anonymity lent the whole narrative a cinematic twist of a darker, familiar kind: “Oswald acted alone, but the hidden country acted through Oswald. This is the perpetual film-noir moral lesson: that the American hierarchy is far more unstable than it seems, and that the small-time crook in his garret and the big-time social leader in his mansion are intimately linked.” Gopnik offers only a series of apercus, not a full-blown interpretation. But they are the kind of insights about JFK , dead or alive, that more scholars ought to emulate, if not elaborate. 47

Perhaps the greatest sign, at least in recent works of history and literature, that the heroic legend of JFK remains strong is the proliferation of popular books that seek to imagine how not just the Vietnam War but the United States and the rest of the world might have been altered if he had survived. What if his limousine had taken a different route that November afternoon, or if rain had forced the Secret Service to affix the hard plastic bubble top to the president's Lincoln Town Car, or if Oswald or another alleged gunman had been a less accurate marksman?

By every measure, Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration of twelve years was more consequential than JFK 's, which lasted less than three. But, it has been more than a half century since any historian or novelist has wondered, at book length, if the New Deal would still have occurred if Giuseppe Zangara, a radical bricklayer, had killed president-elect Roosevelt in Miami's Bayfront Park in February 1933 instead of Chicago mayor Anton Cermak, who was standing next to him. Roosevelt's murder would have put vice president–elect John Garner in the White House. Unlike Johnson, who worked hard to enact JFK 's domestic programs, Garner was a conservative who disliked labor unions and broke with FDR early in his second term over deficit spending and the court-packing plan. 48

The imagined narratives in prominent counterfactual works about JFK have little in common. Jeff Greenfield's If Kennedy Lived speculates that the president would have easily defeated Barry Goldwater in 1964 and refrained from widening the war in Vietnam but then would have ended up in a wheelchair after his back collapsed. In Greenfield's plot, as JFK prepares to leave office, the First Lady announces that she is disgusted with his philandering and wants to lead a separate life. Stephen King's 11/22/63 is a thriller about a Maine schoolteacher who learns how to travel back in time; he moves to Texas and plans to stop Oswald before he can take a shot from the sixth floor of the School Book Depository on Dealey Plaza. (It would be churlish to reveal whether or not he succeeds.) And Stone's JFK assumes, as does his later coauthored book, that his fallen hero would never have sent American combat troops into the jungles of Vietnam. Why else would a large part of the military and political establishment have conspired to kill him, as Stone alleges? 49

Featured on the Presidents Walk in Rapid City, South Dakota, this bronze sculpture, cast by John Lopez in 2009, depicts John F. Kennedy and his son, John F. Kennedy Jr. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith. Courtesy Library of Congress .

Some writers, particularly some historians, ought to consider a less romantic possibility: that if JFK had lived, the decline and fall of the New Deal order which began under Johnson would have happened anyway, albeit more slowly. Kennedy traveled to Texas in November 1963 to attempt to close a bitter split between conservatives and liberals in that state's Democratic party; the potential for such a division was growing in other parts of the South as well—as the popularity of George Wallace was demonstrating. According to the Gallup Poll, JFK 's approval rating had slipped under 60 percent for the first time in two years. Less than a week before Kennedy flew to Texas, the liberal columnist James Reston wrote in the New York Times that the president “has touched the intellect of the country but not the heart … he has not made the people feel as he feels, or lifted them beyond their private purposes to see the larger purposes he has in mind … this is a far cry from the atmosphere he promised … in 1960.” 50

If JFK had been able to sign into law programs to abolish poverty, end housing discrimination, and begin affirmative action for black and Latino Americans, he could well have suffered the same strong backlash from white working-class Democrats that put Johnson on the defensive during the latter part of his administration. It is difficult to believe that the black freedom movement, catalyst for so much that occurred in the politics of the 1960s and 1970s, would not have had much the same impact—positive and negative—under a liberal Democrat who eventually took up its cause as under his equally liberal successor. To imagine that JFK could have fully embraced the struggle for black equality, as did LBJ , and held the New Deal coalition together is to imagine a different nation in which class solidarity would have trumped racial resentment. As Jefferson Cowie argues in his recent book about the fate of the order that FDR and his labor allies had built, “The future was bright, but the entire system rested on a precarious edifice.” Johnson made mighty efforts to exploit the image of Kennedy as a martyr to advance the legislation of his Great Society. “I had to take the dead man's program and turn it into a martyr's cause,” LBJ told an interviewer after he had left office. “That way Kennedy would live on forever, and so would I.” But by the time Johnson left office, the New Deal order had begun its terminal decline. 51

JFK did, however unintentionally, create an expectation about American presidents that has become an unchallenged norm in the years since he died. As Mailer understood in 1960, Kennedy had the power “to radiate his appeal into some fundamental depths of the American character.” In a culture already dominated by visual and aural media, he showed that one could rise to the political heights on the strength of a riveting personality, an attractive family, a penchant for quotable phrases, and a set of alluring promises. 52

Mailer was elated by “the possibility that the country might be able finally to rise above the deadening verbiage of its issues, its politics, its jargon, and live again by an image of itself.” But that image is, as ever, a contested one, and no barrier hinders magnetic celebrities with political opinions quite different from Kennedy's being able to embody such a transcendent persona too. In the 2016 presidential race, a much older “superman” with orange hair and a lovely wife and children swaggered into the mass-mediated supermarket; his performance style, unlike JFK 's, was already familiar to millions of Americans from his media appearances long before he decided to run for the most powerful office in the world. Future historians may well view the “consequences” of Donald J. Trump's campaign and presidency as even more “staggering” than were Kennedy's nearly sixty years ago. 53

For W. H. Auden's four-stanza poem, written to accompany a 1964 musical score by Igor Stravinsky, see “W. H. Auden's Elegy for J.F.K.,” bar none group , Nov. 22, 2013, http://www.barnonegroup.com/2013/11/wh-audens-elegy-for-jfk.html . For John F. Kennedy's ratings and comparisons, see “Washington, Lincoln Most Popular Presidents: Nixon, Bush Least Popular,” Rasmussen Reports , July 4, 2007, http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/people2/2007/washington_lincoln_most_popular_presidents_nixon_bush_least_popular ; “Presidential Historians Survey 2017,” C-SPAN , https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2017/ ; and Dylan Matthews, “Americans Think John F. Kennedy Was One of Our Greatest Presidents. He Wasn't,” Wonkblog, Washington Post , Nov. 22, 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/11/22/americans-think-john-f-kennedy-was-one-of-our-greatest-presidents-he-wasnt/?utm_term=.7b89f759a2ce . I was unable to find polls that break down opinions about Kennedy by age cohort. But for anecdotal perceptions about the views of “millennials,” see Scott D. Reich, “ JFK and the Millennial Generation,” HuffingtonPost.com , Jan. 23, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-d-reich/JFK-millennials_b_4263057.html ; and Lisa Maria Garza, “ JFK : 50 Years On, Millennials Cross-Examine Boomer Veneration,” Reuters , Nov. 20, 2013, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-JFK-generations-idUSBRE9AJ1CU20131120 .

“A Roundup of New Books on John F. Kennedy,” Washington Post , Oct. 25, 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-roundup-of-new-books-on-john-f-kennedy/2013/10/25/c40875f0-1a32-11e3-82ef-a059e54c49d0_story.html?utm_term=.015d9912ea0d . Emphasis in original. Stephen King, 11/22/63: A Novel (New York, 2011). Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard, Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot (New York, 2012). For a chronological list of the actors who have portrayed JFK , ranging from Martin Sheen to Ossie Davis to Greg Kinnear, see Andrew Hoberek, ed., The Cambridge Companion to John F. Kennedy (New York, 2015), 259–60. For a Web site of JFK 's life, see Daily jfk , http://www.dailyjfk.com/ . Larry J. Sabato, The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy (New York, 2013), 423; Stephen Fagin, Assassination and Commemoration : JFK , Dallas, and the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza (Norman, 2013). “Memorial Design,” Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial , http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/#memorial/design?p=0 . Arlington National Cemetery does not track the number of visitors to each gravesite, but between 3 and 4 million people visit the cemetery each year. Each time I have been there over the past three decades, crowds were clustered around Kennedy's grave, and no other. Courtney Dock, Digital Media Engagement, Arlington National Cemetery, to Michael Kazin, e-mail, May 22, 2017 (in Michael Kazin's possession). For an excellent new account of how JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy constructed an image of the man and his presidency that mostly endures, see Michael J. Hogan, The Afterlife of John Fitzgerald Kennedy: A Biography (New York, 2017).

Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963 (Boston, 2003). Fredrik Logevall, a historian of the United States in Vietnam, is currently at work on a one-volume JFK biography.

Ibid. , ix. William E. Leuchtenburg, “John F. Kennedy, Twenty Years Later,” American Heritage , 35 (Dec. 1983), 50–59, quoted in Alan Brinkley, Liberalism and Its Discontents (Cambridge, Mass., 1998), 212.

Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History (New York, 1986), 7.

On Antonio Gramsci's concept, see Chris Harman, “From Common Sense to Good Sense,” Socialist Review , 292 (Jan. 2005), https://www.marxists.org/archive/harman/2005/01/sense.htm . On Thomas Jefferson, see Francis D. Cogliano, Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy (Charlottesville, 2006). On Andrew Jackson, see Daniel Feller, “Andrew Jackson's Shifting Legacy,” History Now: The Journal of the Gilder Lehrman Institute , https://www.gilder-lehrman.org/history-by-era/age-jackson/essays/andrew-jackson%E2%80%99s-shifting-legacy . Ron Briley, “More Than Just a Slave Holder? George Washington, Adolescents, and American Culture in the 1990s,” in George Washington in and as Culture , ed. Kevin L. Cope (New York, 2001), 236. According to Barry Schwartz, by the end of World War II, the “popularity” of George Washington's “cult was surpassed by [Abraham] Lincoln's, in large part because the latter's famous ‘dignified restraint and aloofness’ seemed anachronistic in an industrial nation which favored social equality over republican conceptions of liberty.” See Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol (New York, 1987), 197.

Barry Schwartz, Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Era: History and Memory in Late Twentieth-Century America (Chicago, 2008), 14, 222, 224. See also Barry Schwartz, Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory (Chicago, 2000); and Richard Wightman Fox, Lincoln's Body: A Cultural History (New York, 2015), 263–66.

Ashley Southall, “Jefferson-Jackson Dinner Will Be Renamed,” New York Times , Aug. 8, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/us/jefferson-jackson-dinner-will-be-renamed.html?_r=0 .

Braudy, Frenzy of Renown , 15.

Norman Mailer, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” Esquire , 54 (Nov. 1960), http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a3858/superman-supermarket/ .

David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York, 1972), 200, 214.

Garry Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power (Boston, 1982), 31. John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage (New York, 1956). The comparison with Martin Luther King Jr., which ends the book, reads, in part: “The famous antitheses and alliterations of John Kennedy's rhetoric sound tinny now. But King's eloquence endures, drawn as it was from ancient sources—the Bible, the spirituals, the hymns and folk songs. He was young at his death, younger than either Kennedy; but he had traveled farther. He did fewer things; but those things last. A mule team drew his coffin in a rough cart; not the sleek military horses and the artillery caisson. He has no eternal flame—and no wonder. He is not dead.” See Wills, Kennedy Imprisonment , 301.

Herbert S. Parmet, Jack: The Struggle of John F. Kennedy (New York, 1980). Herbert S. Parmet, JFK : The Presidency of John F. Kennedy (New York, 1983), 355, 353.

Irving Bernstein, Promises Kept: John F. Kennedy's New Frontier (New York, 1991), 7; David Burner, John F. Kennedy and a New Generation (Glenview, 1988), 169.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston, 1965); Ted Sorensen, Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History (New York, 2008), 117, 121; Thurston Clarke, jfk 's Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President (New York, 2013). For my review of Thurston Clarke's book, see. Michael Kazin, “On the 50th Anniversary of JFK 's Assassination, Don't Bother with the Tributes,” New Republic , July 16, 2013, https://newrepublic.com/article/113804/jfks-last-hundred-days-thurston-clarke-reviewed-michael-kazin .

Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (New York, 2015). For the transcripts of the taped Oval Office conversations, see Sheldon M. Stern, The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory: Myths versus Reality (Stanford, 2012).

For the most recent—and complete—narrative of Kennedy's pre-presidential life, see Dallek, Unfinished Life . See also Nigel Hamilton, JFK : Reckless Youth (New York, 1992). John F. Kennedy, Why England Slept (New York, 1940). John Hersey, “Survival,” New Yorker , June 17, 1944, pp. 27–38; Robert J. Donovan, PT-109: John F. Kennedy in World War II (New York, 1961). Kennedy, Profiles in Courage .

Sorensen, Counselor , 146, 152; Dallek, Unfinished Life , 199. Emphasis in original.

On the political significance and sales of Profiles in Courage , see Jack Doyle, “ JFK 's ‘Profiles in Courage,’ 1954–2008,” The Pop History Dig , Feb. 11, 2008, http://www.pophistorydig.com/topics/jfk%E2%80%99s-profiles-in-courage1954-2008/ .

Dallek, Unfinished Life , 152; David Nasaw, The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy (New York, 2012), 540–42; John Hellmann, The Kennedy Obsession: The American Myth of JFK (New York, 1997), 34. John Hellmann gives no source for the anecdote about pornographic magazines. On Inga Arvad, see Nasaw, Patriarch , 525–26, 540–42. Nigel Hamilton, who based his work on Kennedy's personal correspondence, was the first historian to describe Kennedy's sexual exploits in great detail. See Hamilton, jfk .

Sabato, Kennedy Half-Century , 424.

Ibid. , 76; Mimi Alford, Once upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath (New York, 2012), 55.

Robert Dallek, Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House (New York, 2013), 125. Jacqueline Kennedy has inspired a huge literature herself. Among the more prominent, examples are Sarah Bradford, America's Queen: The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (New York, 2000); Jacqueline Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, Interviews with Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. 1964 , annotated by Michael Beschloss (New York, 2011); and Wayne Koestenbaum, Jackie under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon (New York, 1995). She died in 1994, but, like her husband, remains a universally recognized name and image. Jackie , the 2016 film about her ordeal in the days after the assassination, played all over the world and received several Oscar nominations. No one has yet made a comparable big-budget film, distributed by a major company, and starring an actress as well-known as Natalie Portman about any other former First Lady. Jackie , dir. Pablo Larraín (Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2016).

Mailer, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” paras. 5, 43; G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot, The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s (New York, 2008), 87.

Robert M. Collins, More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America (New York, 2000), 49.

Mailer, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” para. 4. “Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy,” Jan. 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum , https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations/Inaugural-Address.aspx .

Collins, More , 41. On Detroit's economics, see Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, 1996). On textiles, see James C. Benton, “Fraying Fabric: Textile Labor, Trade Politics, and Deindustrialization, 1933–1974” (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 2016). Christopher A. Preble, John F. Kennedy and the Missile Gap (DeKalb, 2004); Greg Thielmann, “The Missile Gap Myth and Its Progeny,” Arms Control Association , May 3, 2011, https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2011_05/Thielmann .

Sean McCann, “‘Investing in Persons’: The Political Culture of Kennedy Liberalism,” in The Cambridge Companion to John F. Kennedy , ed. Andrew Hoberek (New York, 2015), 59–74, esp. 64. For Richard Goodwin's quotation, see ibid. , 60. The ages of some of JFK 's most important advisers at the beginning of his administration were: McGeorge Bundy, 44; Robert McNamara, 44; Walt W. Rostow, 44; Harris Wofford, 34; Robert F. Kennedy, 35.

Jacqueline Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History , 91 (March 2005), 1233–63; Richard H. King, “‘How long? Not long’: Selma , Martin Luther King, and Civil Rights Narratives,” Patterns of Prejudice , 49 (no. 5, 2015), 466–85; Julian E. Zelizer, The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society (New York, 2015), 35.

For the first explanation of Kennedy's reticence, see Dallek, Unfinished Life , 331–32; and Bernstein, Promises Kept , 49–50. For the second explanation, see Isserman and Kazin, America Divided , 57–58; Clay Risen, The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act (New York, 2014); and Sabato, Kennedy Half-Century , 78–79. The only book-length study of Kennedy's disengagement with the civil rights movement is Nick Bryant, The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality (New York, 2006).

Clarke, JFK 's Last Hundred Days , 8–9.

For the view that JFK acted quickly in response to events in the spring of 1963, see Dallek, Unfinished Life , 594–604; and Bryant, Bystander . For two recent histories of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by talented journalists who argue that JFK deserves more credit for conceiving the act, see Risen, Bill of the Century ; and Todd S. Purdum, An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (New York, 2014). “Radio and Television Report to the American People on Civil Rights, June 11, 1963,” speech, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum , https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeches/Civil-Rights-Radio-and-Television-Report_19630611.aspx .

Thomas G. Paterson, “Introduction: John F. Kennedy's Quest for Victory and Global Crisis,” in Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961–1963 , ed. Thomas G. Paterson (New York, 1989), 3–23, esp. 5. For JFK 's quotation, see “John F. Kennedy–Foreign Affairs,” Profiles of U.S. Presidents , http://www.presidentprofiles.com/Kennedy-Bush/John-F-Kennedy-Foreign-affairs.html#ixzz4Fjdkje6h .

Wills, Kennedy Imprisonment , 275. Emphasis in original.

Stern, Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory , 158. For other valuable works on the Cuban missile crisis, see Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (New York, 2008); and James G. Hershberg, “The Cuban Missile Crisis,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War , vol. II: Crises and Détente , ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge, Eng., 2010), 65–87.

Halberstam, Best and the Brightest , 300.

Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley, 1999).

James G. Blight, janet M. Lang, and David A. Welch, Virtual JFK : Vietnam if Kennedy Had Lived (Lanham, 2009), 41, 46, 214–15.

Lawrence Freedman, Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam (New York, 2000), xii.

Ira Stoll, JFK , Conservative (Boston, 2013), 193; Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States (New York, 2012), 316, 323.

Stoll, JFK , Conservative .

For Ronald Reagan's recorded attack in 1961 for the American Medical Association on Kennedy's proposal for what became Medicare, see “Ronald Reagan: Medicare Will Bring a Socialist Dictatorship,” Dec. 13, 2010, YouTube.com , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bejdhs3jGyw . “Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society, 1962,” June 1962, Matrix: Michigan State University , http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/huron.html . Peggy Noonan, What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era (New York, 1990), 6, 9, 11; Michael Wines, “Hometown Molded Pence Even as It Began to Change,” New York Times , July 24, 2016, p. A16.

For a description and analysis of the “culture of conspiracy” that sprouted after the president's murder, see Alice L. George, The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: Political Trauma and American Memory (New York, 2013), 136–71; and James D. Norvell, Treason, Treachery, and Deceit: The Murderers of JFK , MLK , and RFK (Bloomington, 2014). For a summary of the conspiracy theory, see Sherwood Ross, “ LBJ and J. E. Hoover behind MLK Murder, New Book Charges,” June 7, 2014, The Common Ills , http://thecommonills.blogspot.com/2014/06/lbj-and-je-hoover-behind-mlk-murder-new.html .

On the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination in 2013, the Gallup Poll found that 61% of Americans polled believed a conspiracy existed; 31% did not. However, the percentage doubting the conclusion of the Warren Commission was lower than in past years. Art Swift, “Majority in U.S. Still Believe JFK Killed in a Conspiracy,” Gallup , Nov. 15, 2013, http://www.gallup.com/poll/165893/majority-believe-jfk-killed-conspiracy.aspx . In 2013 Fidel Castro told an American journalist that he agreed with the majority's opinion. Jeffrey Goldberg, “Castro: ‘Oswald Could Not Have Been the One Who Killed Kennedy,’” Atlantic , Nov. 20, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/11/castro-oswald-could-not-have-been-the-one-who-killed-kennedy/281674/ . JFK , dir. Oliver Stone (Warner Bros., 1991). “AHR Forum,” American Historical Review , 97 (April 1992), 487–511. On the movie's many inaccuracies and invented characters, see George, Assassination of John F. Kennedy , 161–64.

Philip Shenon, A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination (New York, 2013), 11. Max Holland, “After Thirty Years: Making Sense of the Assassination,” Reviews in American History , 22 (June 1994), 191–209, http://www.washingtondecoded.com/site/files/after_thirty_years.pdf .

Michael Kazin, “John F. Kennedy,” in The Reader's Companion to the American Presidency , ed. Alan Brinkley and Davis Dyer (Boston, 2000), 429. Wills, Kennedy Imprisonment , 62.

Adam Gopnik, “Closer Than That: The Assassination of J.F.K., Fifty Years Later,” New Yorker , Nov. 4, 2013, pp. 100–107. Emphasis in original.

On John Garner's political views, see Anthony Champagne, “John Nance Garner,” in Masters of the House: Congressional Leadership over Two Centuries , ed. Roger H. Davidson, Susan Webb Hammond, and Raymond W. Smock (Boulder, 1998), 144–80. Philip K. Dick's novel The Man in the High Castle does begin with Franklin D. Roosevelt's murder, but Dick speculates only that the United States would have been unprepared to take on the Axis powers. And his work has not been followed by other what-if- FDR -had-been-assassinated books. Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle (New York, 1962).

Jeff Greenfield, If Kennedy Lived: The First and Second Terms of President John F. Kennedy: An Alternate History (New York, 2013); King, 11/22/63; JFK .

David Coleman, “ JFK 's Presidential Approval Ratings,” n.d., online posting, The Fourteenth Day: JFK and the Aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis , http://jfk14thday.com/jfk-presidential-approval-ratings/ . James Reston “The Outlook for Kennedy: Victory with Tears,” New York Times , Nov. 15, 1963, p. 32, quoted in Herbert S. Parmet, “The Kennedy Myth and American Politics,” History Teacher , 24 (Nov. 1990), 31–39, esp. 38.

Jefferson Cowie, The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics (Princeton, 2016), 155. For Lyndon B. Johnson's quotation, see David Greenberg, Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency (New York, 2016), 365.

Mailer, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” para. 62.

Ibid. , para. 63.

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John F. Kennedy’s Presidency: Achievements, Challenges, and Legacy

The presidency of john f. kennedy, introduction.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, often remembered simply as JFK, remains one of the most iconic figures in American political history. Serving as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his tragic assassination in 1963, Kennedy’s short-lived term was marked by a mix of significant accomplishments, heightened Cold War tensions, and an unparalleled charisma that endeared him to many. Born into a family deeply entrenched in public service, Kennedy’s ascension to the highest office in the land seemed almost predestined. Yet, his journey was not without its trials and tribulations.

His presidency came at a critical juncture in American history, nestled between the conservative 1950s and the tumultuous late 1960s. America was on the brink of significant social and political change. Issues of civil rights, a burgeoning space race, and increasing Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union demanded a leader with vision, adaptability, and a touch of audacity. Kennedy, with his youthful energy and inspiring oratory, seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

The significance of Kennedy’s presidency goes beyond the policies he enacted or the challenges he faced. As the youngest person ever elected to the presidency, and the first Catholic to hold the office, his election was groundbreaking. His administration, though brief, would set the stage for many of the seismic shifts in American society and politics that would follow in the decades to come.

This essay seeks to provide an in-depth exploration of Kennedy’s presidency. From his early life and political ascent to the critical decisions he made in office, and ultimately, his enduring legacy. Through this lens, we will gain a deeper understanding of the man, the myth, and the legend, and assess his place in the broader tapestry of U.S. presidents.

Early Life and Political Ascension

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts, to Joseph Patrick Kennedy and Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald Kennedy. His parents were both from prominent Boston families: the Kennedys were successful businesspeople, while the Fitzgeralds had deep political roots, with his maternal grandfather, John Francis Fitzgerald, having served as the mayor of Boston. Growing up in such a setting, public service, ambition, and leadership were imprinted on Kennedy from an early age.

JFK’s early years were characterized by frequent relocations due to his father’s business endeavors and appointments. As a child, he lived in a variety of places, including New York, London, and the family’s summer home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Throughout these moves, the young Kennedy was exposed to a mix of cultures, ideas, and experiences that would later inform his worldview.

Academically, Kennedy’s trajectory was marked by both brilliance and bouts of indifference. He attended the elite Choate Rosemary Hall prep school in Connecticut, where he was more renowned for his charm and wit than for his studies. However, his time at Harvard University would prove more formative. It was here that he penned his senior thesis, “Why England Slept,” examining the reasons for Britain’s lack of preparation for World War II. The work was later published and offered an early glimpse into Kennedy’s analytical prowess and interest in international affairs.

World War II would prove a defining moment for Kennedy, as it did for many of his generation. Enlisting in the U.S. Navy, he served as a commander of a patrol torpedo boat in the Pacific theater. Tragedy struck when his boat, PT-109, was rammed by a Japanese destroyer, leading to the loss of two crew members. Displaying exemplary leadership and courage, Kennedy managed to lead the surviving crew members to safety, an act of heroism that would later become a central narrative in his political career.

After the war, JFK quickly transitioned into politics, a realm where his family name, war hero status, and natural charisma served him well. In 1946, he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in Massachusetts’ 11th congressional district, winning handily. During his tenure in the House, Kennedy focused on issues of labor rights and international relations, particularly the burgeoning Cold War with the Soviet Union. His time in the House was a stepping stone, and by 1952, he set his sights higher, successfully running for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.

In the Senate, Kennedy further solidified his political credentials. He championed issues such as immigration reform, labor rights, and healthcare. However, it was his stance on foreign policy, especially his critiques of the Eisenhower administration’s handling of the Cold War, that garnered him significant national attention. Kennedy’s profile rose dramatically after his marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier in 1953, with the couple quickly becoming media darlings. By the late 1950s, it was evident that Kennedy was aiming for the nation’s top job, setting the stage for the historic 1960 presidential election.

The 1960 Election

The 1960 presidential election was a pivotal moment in American political history, bringing to the forefront the confluence of media, charisma, and policy in shaping the nation’s leadership. With President Dwight D. Eisenhower concluding his second term, the stage was set for a new face to lead the nation into the turbulent 1960s.

For the Democrats, Kennedy emerged as the frontrunner, though his path to the nomination was not without challenges. He faced formidable opponents in the primaries, including Lyndon B. Johnson and Hubert Humphrey. However, Kennedy’s appeal—his youth, eloquence, and forward-looking vision—proved magnetic, particularly against the backdrop of an America yearning for renewed vigor after the comparatively placid 1950s.

The Republican nomination went to Vice President Richard Nixon, a seasoned politician with extensive experience in both domestic and foreign affairs. Nixon’s campaign pitched him as the natural successor to Eisenhower, emphasizing his experience and the continuation of the peace and prosperity achieved under the Republican administration. However, Nixon, though eminently qualified, lacked the charismatic spark that Kennedy possessed in abundance.

One of the defining moments of the 1960 campaign was the series of televised debates between Kennedy and Nixon, known as the first-ever U.S. presidential debates to be televised. These debates underscored the profound impact of television on modern politics. Kennedy, well-prepared and telegenic, came across as confident and knowledgeable, while Nixon, recovering from illness and less comfortable on camera, appeared less assured. For many viewers, the visual contrast between the two candidates was stark, and the debates played a pivotal role in shaping public perception.

While policy discussions during the election ranged from civil rights to Cold War tensions, it was the broader narrative of change versus status quo that dominated the campaign. Kennedy’s call to action, encapsulated in his “New Frontier” speech, promised an America that would “get the country moving again.” His campaign themes emphasized vigor, youth, and a fresh approach to the nation’s challenges, both at home and abroad.

The election itself was one of the closest in U.S. history. Kennedy secured victory with just a 0.17% margin in the popular vote. His electoral college win was more decisive, with 303 votes to Nixon’s 219. Controversies, however, shadowed the results, with allegations of voter fraud in states like Illinois and Texas. While these claims have been extensively debated, they did not change the outcome: John F. Kennedy became the youngest person ever elected to the presidency and the first Roman Catholic to hold the office, marking a transformative moment in the nation’s political trajectory.

Domestic Policies

The Kennedy administration, often referred to as the “New Frontier,” sought to bring about transformative change in various sectors of American life. From economic reforms to civil rights and space exploration, the aspirations of this era were as broad as they were ambitious.

The New Frontier: Kennedy’s domestic program was christened the “New Frontier,” a term he popularized during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1960. It aimed to address a variety of societal challenges, reinvigorate the American spirit, and ensure progress in multiple spheres.

Addressing Economic Recession: One of the foremost challenges facing Kennedy was the economic stagnation the country was grappling with. To counter this, he proposed a series of measures, including tax cuts and increased government spending on defense and space exploration. While he faced significant opposition in getting some of these measures through Congress, the emphasis was clear: stimulate economic growth and reduce unemployment. His efforts laid the groundwork for the tax cuts that would be enacted under his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, which many credit with spurring the economic boom of the mid-1960s.

Civil Rights Movement: Perhaps one of the most defining aspects of Kennedy’s presidency was his stance on civil rights. Initially hesitant to confront this divisive issue, he gradually became a more vocal advocate for racial equality, especially after witnessing the escalating confrontations in the South. The televised images of peaceful protesters facing violent backlash deeply moved the nation. In response, Kennedy delivered a historic speech in June 1963, affirming civil rights as a “moral issue.” His administration subsequently introduced comprehensive civil rights legislation, which after his death would be signed into law as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by President Johnson.

Space Race: The Cold War rivalry extended beyond geopolitics, encapsulated vividly in the race to space against the Soviet Union. After the Soviets’ successful launch of Yuri Gagarin into orbit, Kennedy saw the strategic and symbolic importance of space exploration. In a bold declaration before Congress in 1961, he pledged that the U.S. would send an astronaut to the moon before the end of the decade. This commitment not only reinvigorated the American space program but also led to the historic Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.

Education and Healthcare Initiatives: Kennedy recognized the foundational importance of education and healthcare in ensuring a prosperous and equitable society. He advocated for federal aid to education, emphasizing the need to modernize schools and reduce class sizes. On the healthcare front, his administration pushed for reforms that would provide elderly Americans with medical care, a precursor to the Medicare system established under Johnson.

Throughout his term, Kennedy’s domestic agenda faced both successes and setbacks. While not all of his initiatives came to fruition during his presidency, they set the tone for the progressive reforms that would be realized in the subsequent years. His vision for a renewed America, marked by justice, progress, and innovation, remains a defining feature of his legacy.

Foreign Policy and Cold War Challenges

John F. Kennedy’s tenure as president came during a time of heightened global tensions. The Cold War, the ideological and political struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, presented a series of challenges that required deft and strategic handling. Kennedy’s approach to these issues showcased both his vision for a peaceful world and the realities of navigating a bipolar geopolitical landscape.

The Bay of Pigs Invasion: One of Kennedy’s earliest foreign policy tests was the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961. This covert operation, planned during the Eisenhower administration, aimed to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro by supporting Cuban exiles in a military invasion. However, the mission disastrously failed, leading to the capture of many exiles and a significant embarrassment for the Kennedy administration. The failed invasion reinforced Castro’s position and pushed Cuba closer to the Soviet Union, setting the stage for future confrontations.

The Cuban Missile Crisis: Perhaps the most defining moment of Kennedy’s presidency, the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. After discovering that the Soviets were installing nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores, Kennedy faced immense pressure. Rejecting immediate military action, he imposed a naval blockade around Cuba and demanded the removal of the missiles. Tense negotiations ensued, culminating in an agreement with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The Soviets would dismantle their missiles in Cuba, while the U.S. secretly agreed to remove its missiles from Turkey. This crisis showcased Kennedy’s commitment to diplomacy and the importance of backchannel communications in de-escalating potentially catastrophic situations.

The Berlin Wall: Another focal point of Cold War tensions was Berlin. In 1961, to stem the tide of East Germans defecting to the West, the East German government, backed by the Soviet Union, erected the Berlin Wall, dividing the city. While Kennedy expressed his opposition to the wall and assured West Berliners of American support, he also acknowledged the reality that trying to prevent the wall’s construction might lead to a larger, possibly nuclear, conflict.

Peace Corps and Alliance for Progress: In contrast to these confrontations, Kennedy also initiated programs to foster international cooperation and goodwill. The Peace Corps, established in 1961, sent American volunteers abroad to assist with educational, health, and developmental projects. Meanwhile, the Alliance for Progress aimed to strengthen U.S. ties with Latin America, promoting economic cooperation and development to counter the appeal of socialist movements in the region.

Test Ban Treaty: Amid the tensions of the Cold War, Kennedy also sought to limit the arms race. In 1963, he secured one of his most notable foreign policy achievements: the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. This agreement with the Soviet Union prohibited nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater, and in space, though not underground. It marked a significant step toward nuclear disarmament and showcased Kennedy’s enduring commitment to a more peaceful world.

In the realm of foreign policy, Kennedy’s approach was marked by a blend of pragmatism and idealism. While navigating the treacherous waters of the Cold War, he remained steadfast in his belief in diplomacy and international cooperation, laying the groundwork for future détente between the superpowers.

Social and Cultural Impact

The presidency of John F. Kennedy resonated far beyond the realm of politics, leaving an indelible mark on the social and cultural fabric of America. His era, often romanticized, reflected the convergence of leadership, media, and a burgeoning American identity.

The Kennedy Mystique – Camelot: The term “Camelot” became synonymous with the Kennedy era, evoking images of youth, glamour, and idealism. Inspired by the Broadway musical about King Arthur’s court, Jackie Kennedy, in a post-assassination interview, likened her husband’s administration to this mythical realm. The Kennedy White House, with its youthful vigor, stylish elegance, and aura of promise, captivated the American imagination, representing a stark departure from the more staid and conventional political imagery of the past.

The Media Presidency: Kennedy’s relationship with the media was groundbreaking. He was the first president to effectively use television as a communication tool, recognizing its power to directly address the American public. His televised press conferences, characterized by wit and intelligence, became must-watch events. Furthermore, his administration’s accessibility to journalists, photographers, and broadcasters facilitated a more intimate portrayal of presidential life, from iconic family moments in the White House to behind-the-scenes decision-making.

Arts and Culture: The Kennedys were ardent patrons of the arts. The White House frequently hosted concerts, performances, and literary events, showcasing a diverse range of American and global talents. This embrace of culture not only elevated the status of artists but also positioned the arts as central to national identity and dialogue.

Challenges to the Status Quo: The early 1960s were characterized by significant social upheaval, with movements challenging long-standing norms related to race, gender, and societal structures. While Kennedy was not a radical reformer, his administration, both symbolically and substantively, reflected and responded to these shifts. His engagement with the civil rights movement, though cautious, signaled the importance of federal intervention in ensuring equal rights. Additionally, the establishment of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, showcased a growing recognition of gender equality issues.

A Legacy of Inspiration: Perhaps Kennedy’s most lasting cultural impact was his ability to inspire. His call to “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” galvanized a generation to engage in public service. This spirit of active citizenship, whether realized through joining the Peace Corps, participating in the civil rights movement, or pursuing public office, marked a profound shift in how many Americans perceived their role in the national narrative.

In reflecting on Kennedy’s cultural legacy, it’s evident that he, along with his family and administration, profoundly shaped the nation’s perception of leadership, public service, and American identity. Though his tenure was tragically short, the images, ideas, and aspirations he left behind have endured, continuing to influence American society in multifaceted ways.

Controversies and Criticisms

Like all presidencies, John F. Kennedy’s tenure was not without its share of controversies and criticisms. While his charisma and vision often commanded respect and admiration, various decisions, actions, and personal aspects of his life attracted scrutiny and disapproval, both during his time in office and in subsequent historical evaluations.

Bay of Pigs Invasion: One of Kennedy’s most significant early missteps was the Bay of Pigs invasion, an ill-fated attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba. While the operation’s planning began under Eisenhower, Kennedy approved its execution. The invasion’s failure not only strengthened Castro’s position but also damaged Kennedy’s reputation, casting doubts on his decision-making and leadership abilities.

Civil Rights Caution: Though Kennedy eventually became a proponent of civil rights, many activists and observers criticized him for not taking swifter and more decisive action early in his presidency. His cautious approach, particularly in the face of violent confrontations in the South, was seen by some as a reluctance to fully commit to the civil rights cause.

Personal Life and Conduct: In the decades following his death, revelations about Kennedy’s personal life, particularly his extramarital affairs, have sparked criticism. These indiscretions have led to debates about his character and the extent to which personal conduct should influence evaluations of presidential legacies.

Health and Medication: Kennedy’s health was a closely guarded secret during his presidency. He suffered from various ailments, including Addison’s disease, and took a range of medications. Some historians and medical professionals have speculated on how these health challenges might have influenced his decision-making and performance in office.

Engagement with Organized Crime: Allegations and conspiracy theories have linked Kennedy’s election and administration to organized crime figures. While direct evidence is limited, it’s widely believed that some backchannel communications and arrangements existed, particularly regarding efforts to combat Castro’s regime in Cuba.

Handling of the Cold War: Some critics argue that Kennedy’s strategies, especially during the Cuban Missile Crisis, were overly aggressive and risked escalating the Cold War unnecessarily. While many laud his ultimate decision to pursue a diplomatic resolution, debates continue about the wisdom of his broader approach to Soviet relations.

In assessing Kennedy’s presidency, it’s essential to balance the admiration for his vision and achievements with a recognition of the controversies and criticisms that surrounded him. These complexities render him not as a one-dimensional hero but as a nuanced figure navigating the multifaceted challenges of his time.

Assassination and Legacy

The tragic and sudden assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, marked one of the darkest moments in American history. The profound shock, grief, and sense of loss felt across the nation and the world were emblematic of the profound impact Kennedy had during his short time in office.

The Assassination: As Kennedy’s motorcade made its way through Dealey Plaza, he was fatally shot, with Texas Governor John Connally also wounded in the attack. Lee Harvey Oswald, arrested for the crime, was himself killed two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby. The Warren Commission, established to investigate the assassination, concluded in 1964 that Oswald acted alone. However, due to the sudden nature of Oswald’s death and other factors, numerous conspiracy theories about the assassination have persisted over the decades.

National Mourning: In the days following the assassination, the United States underwent a period of deep mourning. Televised images of a grieving Jackie Kennedy, the somber funeral procession, and young John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father’s casket are forever etched in the national memory. The sense of lost potential and a future abruptly cut short added to the nation’s collective grief.

Enduring Legacy: While Kennedy’s time in office was brief, his legacy has proven enduring. His vision of a “New Frontier” shaped subsequent generations’ views on public service, ambition, and American potential. Programs initiated during his tenure, from the Peace Corps to space exploration, have had lasting impacts. Furthermore, his emphasis on civil rights, though cautious, set the stage for more significant advancements in the years that followed.

On a broader cultural scale, the “Camelot” mystique surrounding Kennedy has persisted, representing a bygone era of hope, elegance, and aspiration. His speeches, particularly those emphasizing unity, service, and global cooperation, continue to inspire.

Re-evaluation Over Time: As with all historical figures, Kennedy’s presidency has been subject to re-evaluation. While many celebrate his achievements and the inspiration he provided, others highlight the controversies, unfulfilled promises, and the challenges he faced in enacting his vision. Regardless of these debates, there’s no denying the profound and lasting impact Kennedy had on the American psyche and the course of national history.

In conclusion, John F. Kennedy’s legacy is one marked by hope, ambition, and a deep commitment to a more just and united world. While his life and presidency were tragically cut short, the ideals he championed continue to resonate, making him a pivotal figure in the tapestry of American history.

The presidency of John F. Kennedy, though brief, remains one of the most studied, debated, and influential periods in American history. At a pivotal juncture, Kennedy offered a vision of hope, progress, and unity, seeking to propel the nation towards a “New Frontier.” While faced with complex domestic challenges and global tensions, his leadership showcased a blend of pragmatism and idealism, often striving for diplomatic solutions in a polarized Cold War environment.

Yet, like any leader, Kennedy’s tenure had its share of controversies and criticisms. Decisions, both domestic and international, as well as revelations about his personal life, have led to nuanced evaluations of his presidency. However, the profound sense of loss felt by the nation and the world upon his assassination is testament to the profound influence and hope he instilled.

Over six decades later, the legacy of John F. Kennedy endures, a testament to the enduring power of vision, leadership, and the constant pursuit of a better tomorrow. In studying his presidency, we gain insights not only into a transformative era but also into the timeless values and aspirations that continue to shape the American journey.

Frequently Asked Questions about President John F. Kennedy

“Camelot” stems from a post-assassination interview with his widow, Jacqueline Kennedy. She referenced the musical “Camelot” by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, which tells the story of King Arthur’s court, to describe the idealism, hope, and enchantment that characterized her husband’s time in office. The specific line she quoted, “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot,” encapsulated the fleeting nature of Kennedy’s presidency and the nostalgic aura that surrounded it. This romanticized view portrayed the Kennedy era as one of youthful energy, glamour, and a golden age of American politics. Over time, this “Camelot” narrative has persisted in popular culture, contributing to the enduring mystique of the Kennedy years.

President Kennedy’s approach to civil rights was marked by a blend of caution and commitment. Unlike some of his predecessors, particularly in the early and mid-20th century, Kennedy recognized the growing momentum of the civil rights movement and the necessity for federal action. However, he was initially hesitant to expend political capital on what he perceived as a divisive issue, especially given the resistance from southern Democrats. It wasn’t until the escalating violence and unrest, notably events like the University of Mississippi riots and the Birmingham campaign, that Kennedy took more decisive action. In June 1963, he delivered a nationally televised address, declaring civil rights a “moral issue.” Later that year, he introduced comprehensive civil rights legislation, which, after his death, was passed as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Thus, while Kennedy’s approach was more progressive than many of his predecessors, it was also characterized by strategic pragmatism.

The Cuban Missile Crisis, which took place in October 1962, stands as one of the most critical moments of the Cold War and a defining point in Kennedy’s presidency. When American intelligence discovered Soviet nuclear missiles being installed in Cuba, just 90 miles off the U.S. coast, the world was brought to the brink of nuclear war. Over 13 tense days, Kennedy and his advisors navigated a diplomatic tightrope, balancing the need to protect American interests and security with the desire to avoid a full-scale nuclear conflict. Kennedy’s decision to implement a naval blockade of Cuba, combined with backchannel communications, eventually led to a resolution: the Soviets would remove their missiles from Cuba, and the U.S. would not invade the island nation and would later remove missiles from Turkey. The crisis showcased Kennedy’s leadership, his reliance on a close-knit group of advisors, and his ability to combine firmness with diplomacy. It also led to a reevaluation of Cold War brinkmanship and the eventual establishment of a direct communication link between Washington and Moscow, known as the “hotline.”

John F. Kennedy’s Catholic faith played a significant role in the 1960 election, making him the first and only Catholic president in U.S. history. During the campaign, many Protestants, especially in the South, were wary of a Catholic president, fearing that he might be more loyal to the Pope than to the Constitution. To address these concerns, Kennedy delivered a landmark speech before a group of Protestant ministers in Houston, asserting that his religious beliefs would not interfere with his duties as president and emphasizing the importance of the separation of church and state. This address helped to alleviate many voters’ concerns and remains a seminal moment in American political discourse on religion. As president, Kennedy rarely discussed his faith publicly, focusing on broader themes of morality, public service, and global unity. While his Catholicism influenced his personal values and worldview, he was careful to ensure that policy decisions were made in the interest of all Americans, irrespective of religious beliefs.

Kennedy’s inaugural address, delivered on January 20, 1961, is remembered as one of the most iconic speeches in American history. Its lasting impact is due to a combination of its eloquent rhetoric, aspirational themes, and Kennedy’s call to action. The most famous line, “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country,” captured the essence of the speech: a call for public service, sacrifice, and collective action in pursuit of global peace and prosperity. Beyond its memorable lines, the address set the tone for Kennedy’s administration, emphasizing youth, vigor, and a forward-looking vision. The speech’s resonance was amplified by the historical context, marking a transition from the older generation of leaders and offering hope during the tense early days of the Cold War.

The Space Race was a significant component of the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Kennedy’s commitment to American leadership in space exploration was galvanized by the Soviets’ early achievements, most notably Yuri Gagarin’s orbit of Earth in 1961. Recognizing the symbolic and strategic value of space dominance, Kennedy made a bold declaration before Congress in May 1961, committing the nation to “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth” before the decade’s end. This ambitious goal led to increased funding and momentum for NASA’s Apollo program. While Kennedy did not live to see the moon landing in 1969, his vision and commitment played a pivotal role in ensuring American success in this crucial Cold War arena.

The Kennedy family played an instrumental role in John F. Kennedy’s political ascent. Hailing from a prominent and wealthy Massachusetts family, JFK benefited from the ambition and resources of his father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., a successful businessman and former ambassador. The elder Kennedy provided financial support, connections, and strategic guidance throughout JFK’s early political career. Additionally, the close-knit Kennedy siblings, including Robert and Ted Kennedy, were actively involved in campaign strategies, public relations, and policy initiatives. The family’s legacy, combined with their collective charisma and narrative of public service, contributed to the enduring “Kennedy mystique” in American politics.

While it was not widely known at the time, Kennedy’s health was indeed a concern throughout his life and presidency. He suffered from a range of ailments, including chronic back pain, gastrointestinal issues, and Addison’s disease—a rare endocrine disorder. To manage these conditions, Kennedy took a regimen of medications, which sometimes led to side effects. His health struggles were kept largely hidden from the public, with the administration presenting an image of youthful vigor. In hindsight, some historians and medical professionals have debated how Kennedy’s health might have influenced his decision-making and stamina in office. However, despite these challenges, Kennedy managed to maintain an active and demanding presidential schedule.

John F. Kennedy’s experiences in World War II had a profound impact on his character and perspective. Serving as a Navy lieutenant, he commanded PT-109, a patrol torpedo boat in the Pacific. In 1943, the boat was struck by a Japanese destroyer, leading to a harrowing ordeal in which Kennedy showcased leadership and resilience in ensuring the survival of his crew. This experience deepened his understanding of war’s horrors and the sacrifices of those in uniform. It also instilled in him a sense of duty, resilience, and the complexities of global conflict. As president, his wartime experiences likely influenced his approach to foreign policy, emphasizing diplomacy, understanding the human cost of military decisions, and the value of international alliances.

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John F. Kennedy

By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 16, 2024 | Original: October 29, 2009

Elected in 1960 as the 35th president of the United States, 43-year-old John F. Kennedy became one of the youngest U.S. presidents, as well as the first Roman Catholic to hold the office. Born into one of America’s wealthiest families, he parlayed an elite education and a reputation as a military hero into a successful run for Congress in 1946 and for the Senate in 1952. 

As president, Kennedy confronted mounting Cold War tensions in Cuba, Vietnam and elsewhere. He also led a renewed drive for public service and eventually provided federal support for the growing civil rights movement. His assassination on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, sent shockwaves around the world and turned the all-too-human Kennedy into a larger-than-life heroic figure. To this day, historians continue to rank him among the best-loved presidents in American history.

John F. Kennedy’s Early Life

Born on May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy (known as Jack) was the second of nine children. His parents, Joseph and Rose Kennedy, hailed from two of Boston’s most prominent Irish Catholic political families. Despite persistent health problems throughout his childhood and teenage years (he would later be diagnosed with a rare endocrine disorder called Addison’s disease), Jack led a privileged youth. He attended private schools such as Canterbury and Choate and spent summers in Hyannis Port on Cape Cod.

Joe Kennedy, a hugely successful businessman and an early supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt , was appointed chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934 and named U.S. ambassador to Great Britain in 1937. As a student at Harvard University, Jack traveled in Europe as his father’s secretary. His senior thesis about Britain’s unpreparedness for war was later published as an acclaimed book, Why England Slept (1940).

Watch the three-episode documentary event, Kennedy . Available to stream now.

Did you know? John F. Kennedy's Senate career got off to a rocky start when he refused to condemn Senator Joseph McCarthy, a personal friend of the Kennedy family whom the Senate voted to censure in 1954 for his relentless pursuit of suspected communists. In the end, though he planned to vote against McCarthy, Kennedy missed the vote when he was hospitalized after back surgery.

Jack joined the U.S. Navy in 1941 and two years later was sent to the South Pacific, where he was given command of a Patrol-Torpedo (PT) boat. In August 1943, a Japanese destroyer struck the craft, PT-109, in the Solomon Islands. Kennedy helped some of his marooned crew back to safety and was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism. His older brother, Joe Jr., was not so fortunate: He was killed in August 1944 when his Navy airplane exploded on a secret mission against a German rocket-launching site. A grieving Joe Sr. told Jack it was his duty to fulfill the destiny once intended for Joe Jr.—to become the first Catholic president of the United States.

JFK’s Beginnings in Politics

Abandoning plans to be a journalist, Jack left the Navy by the end of 1944. Less than a year later, he returned to Boston, preparing a run for Congress in 1946. As a moderately conservative Democrat, and backed by his father’s fortune, Jack won his party’s nomination handily and carried the mostly working-class Eleventh District by nearly three to one over his Republican opponent in the general election. He entered the 80th Congress in January 1947, at the age of 29, and immediately attracted attention (as well as some criticism from older members of the Washington establishment) for his youthful appearance and relaxed, informal style.

Kennedy won reelection to the House of Representatives in 1948 and 1950, and in 1952 ran successfully for the Senate, defeating the popular Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. On September 12, 1953, Kennedy married the beautiful socialite and journalist Jacqueline (Jackie) Lee Bouvier. Two years later, he was forced to undergo a painful operation on his back. While recovering from the surgery, Jack wrote another best-selling book, Profiles in Courage , which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957. (The book was later revealed to be mostly the work of Kennedy’s longtime aide, Theodore Sorenson.)

Kennedy’s Road to Presidency

After nearly earning his party’s nomination for vice president (under Adlai Stevenson) in 1956, Kennedy announced his candidacy for president on January 2, 1960. He defeated a primary challenge from the more liberal Hubert Humphrey and chose the Senate majority leader, Lyndon Johnson of Texas, as his running mate. In the general election, Kennedy faced a difficult battle against his Republican opponent, Richard Nixon, a two-term vice president under the popular Dwight D. Eisenhower . 

Offering a young, energetic alternative to Nixon and the status quo, Kennedy benefited from his performance (and telegenic appearance) in the first-ever televised presidential debates, watched by millions of viewers. In November’s election, Kennedy won by a narrow margin—fewer than 120,000 out of some 70 million votes cast—becoming the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic to be elected president of the United States.

With his beautiful young wife and their two small children (Caroline, born in 1957, and John Jr., born just weeks after the election), Kennedy lent an unmistakable aura of youth and glamour to the White House . In his inaugural address, given on January 20, 1961, the new president called on his fellow Americans to work together in the pursuit of progress and the elimination of poverty, but also in the battle to win the ongoing Cold War against communism around the world. Kennedy’s famous closing words expressed the need for cooperation and sacrifice on the part of the American people: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

Kennedy’s Foreign Policy Challenges

An early crisis in the foreign affairs arena occurred in April 1961, when Kennedy approved the plan to send 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles in an amphibious landing at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Intended to spur a rebellion that would overthrow the communist leader Fidel Castro , the mission ended in failure, with nearly all of the exiles captured or killed. 

That June, Kennedy met with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna to discuss the city of Berlin, which had been divided after World War II between Allied and Soviet control. Two months later, East German troops began erecting a wall to divide the city. Kennedy sent an army convoy to reassure West Berliners of U.S. support, and would deliver one of his most famous speeches in West Berlin in June 1963.

Kennedy clashed again with Khrushchev in October 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis . After learning that the Soviet Union was constructing a number of nuclear and long-range missile sites in Cuba that could pose a threat to the continental United States, Kennedy announced a naval blockade of Cuba. 

The tense standoff lasted nearly two weeks before Khrushchev agreed to dismantle Soviet missile sites in Cuba in return for America’s promise not to invade the island and the removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey and other sites close to Soviet borders. In July 1963, Kennedy won his greatest foreign affairs victory when Khrushchev agreed to join him and Britain’s Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in signing a nuclear test ban treaty. In Southeast Asia, however, Kennedy’s desire to curb the spread of communism led him to escalate U.S. involvement in the conflict in Vietnam, even as privately he expressed his dismay over the situation.

Kennedy’s Leadership at Home

During his first year in office, Kennedy oversaw the launch of the Peace Corps, which would send young volunteers to underdeveloped countries all over the world. Otherwise, he was unable to achieve much of his proposed legislation during his lifetime, including two of his biggest priorities: income tax cuts and a civil rights bill. Slow to commit himself to the civil rights cause, events forced Kennedy into action, spurring him to send federal troops to support the desegregation of the University of Mississippi after riots there left two dead and many others injured. The following summer, Kennedy announced his intention to propose a comprehensive civil rights bill and endorsed the massive March on Washington that took place that August.

Kennedy held enormous popularity, both at home and abroad, and his family drew famous comparisons to King Arthur’s court at Camelot. His brother Bobby served as his attorney general, while the youngest Kennedy son, Edward (Ted), was elected to Jack’s former Senate seat in 1962. Jackie Kennedy became an international icon of style, beauty and sophistication, though stories of her husband’s numerous marital infidelities (and his personal association with members of organized crime) would later emerge to complicate the Kennedys’ idyllic image.

JFK’s Assassination

On November 22, 1963, the president and his wife landed in Dallas; he had spoken in San Antonio, Austin and Fort Worth the day before. From the airfield, the party then traveled in a motorcade to the Dallas Trade Mart, the site of Jack’s next speaking engagement. Shortly after 12:30 p.m., as the motorcade passed through downtown Dallas, shots rang out . Bullets struck Kennedy twice, in the neck and head; he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at a nearby hospital.

Authorities arrested 24-old Lee Harvey Oswald, known to have Communist sympathies, for the killing. But he was shot and fatally wounded two days later by local nightclub owner Jack Ruby while being led to jail. Almost immediately, alternative theories of Kennedy’s assassination emerged—including conspiracies allegedly run by the KGB , the Mafia and the U.S. military-industrial complex, among others. A presidential commission led by Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded that Oswald had acted alone, but speculation and debate over the assassination have persisted.

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John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy, the 35 th U.S. president, negotiated the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and initiated the Alliance for Progress. He was assassinated in 1963.

Quick Facts

U.s. navy service, u.s. congressman and senator, wife and children, 1960 presidential campaign, u.s. president, assassination and death, release of assassination documents, who was john f. kennedy.

John F. Kennedy served in both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate before becoming the 35 th American president in 1961. While in the White House, Kennedy faced a number of foreign crises, especially in Cuba and Berlin, but managed to secure such achievements as the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and the Alliance for Progress. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas. He was 46 years old.

FULL NAME: John Fitzgerald Kennedy BORN: May 29, 1917 DIED: November 22, 1963 BIRTHPLACE: Brookline, Massachusetts SPOUSE: Jaqueline Kennedy (1953-1963) CHILDREN: Caroline Kennedy , John F. Kennedy Jr. , and Patrick Kennedy ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Gemini

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts. Both the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys were wealthy and prominent Irish Catholic families in Boston. John’s paternal grandfather, P.J. Kennedy, was a wealthy banker and liquor trader, and his maternal grandfather, John E. Fitzgerald, nicknamed “Honey Fitz,” was a skilled politician who served as a congressman and as the mayor of Boston. Kennedy’s mother, Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald , was a Boston debutante, and his father, Joseph Kennedy Sr. , was a successful banker who made a fortune on the stock market after World War I. Joe Kennedy Sr. went on to a government career as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and as an ambassador to Great Britain.

John, nicknamed “Jack,” was the second oldest of a group of nine extraordinary siblings. His brothers and sisters include Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy , and Ted Kennedy , one of the most powerful senators in American history. The Kennedy children remained close-knit and supportive of each other throughout their entire lives.

Joseph and Rose largely spurned the world of Boston socialites into which they had been born to focus instead on their children’s education. Joe Sr. in particular obsessed over every detail of his kids’ lives, a rarity for a father at that time. As a family friend noted, “Most fathers in those days simply weren’t that interested in what their children did. But Joe Kennedy knew what his kids were up to all the time.”

Joe Sr. had great expectations for his children, and he sought to instill in them a fierce competitive fire and the belief that winning was everything. He entered his children in swimming and sailing competitions and chided them for finishing in anything but first place. John’s sister, Eunice, later recalled, “I was 24 before I knew I didn’t have to win something every day.” John bought into his father’s philosophy that winning was everything. “He hates to lose at anything,” Eunice said. “That’s the only thing Jack gets really emotional about—when he loses.”

Despite his father’s constant reprimands, young Kennedy was a poor student and a mischievous boy. He attended a Catholic boys’ boarding school in Connecticut called Canterbury, where he excelled at English and history—the subjects he enjoyed—but nearly flunked Latin, in which he had no interest. Despite his poor grades, Kennedy continued on to Choate, an elite Connecticut preparatory school. Although he was obviously brilliant, evidenced by the extraordinary thoughtfulness and nuance of his work on the rare occasions when he applied himself, Kennedy remained at best a mediocre student, preferring sports, girls, and practical jokes to coursework.

His father wrote to him by way of encouragement, “If I didn’t really feel you had the goods, I would be most charitable in my attitude toward your failings... I am not expecting too much, and I will not be disappointed if you don’t turn out to be a real genius, but I think you can be a really worthwhile citizen with good judgment and understanding.” John was, in fact, very bookish in high school, reading ceaselessly but not the books his teachers assigned.

He was also chronically ill during his childhood and adolescence; he suffered from severe colds, the flu, scarlet fever, and even more severe, undiagnosed diseases that forced him to miss months of school at a time and occasionally brought him to the brink of death.

After graduating from Choate and spending one semester at Princeton University, Kennedy transferred to Harvard University in 1936. There, he repeated his by then well-established academic pattern, excelling occasionally in the classes he enjoyed but proving only an average student due to the omnipresent diversions of sports and women. Handsome, charming, and blessed with a radiant smile, Kennedy was incredibly popular with his Harvard classmates. His friend Lem Billings recalled, “Jack was more fun than anyone I’ve ever known, and I think most people who knew him felt the same way about him.” Kennedy was also an incorrigible womanizer. He wrote to Billings during his sophomore year, “I can now get tail as often and as free as I want, which is a step in the right direction.”

Nevertheless, as an upperclassman, Kennedy finally grew serious about his studies and began to realize his potential. His father had been appointed ambassador to Great Britain, and on an extended visit in 1939, John decided to research and write a senior thesis on why Britain was so unprepared to fight Germany in World War II . An incisive analysis of Britain’s failures to meet the Nazi challenge, the paper was so well-received that upon Kennedy’s graduation in 1940 it was published as a book, Why England Slept , selling more than 80,000 copies. Kennedy’s father sent him a cablegram in the aftermath of the book’s publication: “Two things I always knew about you one that you are smart two that you are a swell guy love dad.”

Shortly after graduating from Harvard, Kennedy joined the U.S. Navy and was assigned to command a patrol torpedo boat in the South Pacific. On August 2, 1943, his boat, PT-109 , was rammed by a Japanese warship and split in two. Two sailors died, and Kennedy badly injured his back. Hauling another wounded sailor by the strap of his life vest, Kennedy led the survivors to a nearby island, where they were rescued six days later. The incident earned him the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for “extremely heroic conduct” and a Purple Heart for the injuries he suffered.

However, Kennedy’s older brother, Joe Jr., who had also joined the Navy, wasn’t so fortunate. A pilot, he died when his plane blew up in August 1944. Handsome, athletic, intelligent, and ambitious, Joseph Kennedy Jr. had been pegged by his father as the one among his children who would some day become president of the United States. In the aftermath of Joe Jr.’s death, John took his family’s hopes and aspirations for his older brother upon himself.

Upon his discharge from the Navy, John worked briefly as a reporter for Hearst Newspapers. Then in 1946, at the age of 29, he decided to run for the U.S. House of Representatives from a working-class district of Boston, a seat being vacated by Democrat James Michael Curly. Bolstered by his status as a war hero, his family connections, and his father’s money, the young Democrat won the election handily.

However, after the glory and excitement of publishing his first book and serving in World War II, Kennedy found his work in Congress incredibly dull. Despite serving three terms, from 1946 to 1952, Kennedy remained frustrated by what he saw as stifling rules and procedures that prevented a young, inexperienced representative from making an impact. “We were just worms in the House,” he later recalled. “Nobody paid attention to us nationally.”

In 1952, seeking greater influence and a larger platform, Kennedy challenged Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge for his seat in the U.S. Senate. Once again backed by his father’s vast financial resources, Kennedy hired his younger brother Robert as his campaign manager. Robert put together what one journalist called “the most methodical, the most scientific, the most thoroughly detailed, the most intricate, the most disciplined and smoothly working state-wide campaign in Massachusetts history—and possibly anywhere else.”

In an election year in which Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress, Kennedy nevertheless won a narrow victory, giving him considerable clout within the Democratic Party. According to one of his aides, the decisive factor in Kennedy’s victory was his personality: “He was the new kind of political figure that people were looking for that year, dignified and gentlemanly and well-educated and intelligent, without the air of superior condescension.”

Kennedy continued to suffer frequent illnesses during his career in the Senate. While recovering from one surgery, he wrote another book, profiling eight senators who had taken courageous but unpopular stances. Profiles in Courage won the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for biography, and Kennedy remains the only American president to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Otherwise, Kennedy’s eight-year Senate career was relatively undistinguished. Bored by the Massachusetts-specific issues on which he had to spend much of his time, Kennedy was more drawn to the international challenges posed by the Soviet Union’s growing nuclear arsenal and the Cold War battle for the hearts and minds of Third World nations.

Shortly after his Senate election, Kennedy met a beautiful young woman named Jacqueline Bouvier at a dinner party and, in his own words, “leaned across the asparagus and asked her for a date.” They were married on September 12, 1953, until John’s death a decade later.

The couple first expected to become parents in 1956, but Jackie delivered a stillborn girl they intended to name Arabella. John and Jackie then welcomed their daughter, Caroline , in November 1957 and their son John Jr. in November 1960. In August 1963, their son Patrick was born prematurely and died two days after his birth.

In 1956, Kennedy was very nearly selected as Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson’s running mate but was ultimately passed over for Estes Kefauver from Tennessee. Four years later, Kennedy decided to run for president himself.

In the 1960 Democratic primaries, Kennedy outmaneuvered his main opponent, Hubert Humphrey, with superior organization and financial resources. Selecting Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate, Kennedy faced Vice President Richard Nixon in the general election. The election turned largely on a series of televised national debates in which Kennedy bested Nixon, an experienced and skilled debater, by appearing relaxed, healthy, and vigorous in contrast to his pallid and tense opponent.

On November 8, 1960, Kennedy defeated Nixon by a razor-thin margin to become the 35 th president of the United States of America. Kennedy’s election was historic in several respects. At the age of 43, he was the second youngest American president in history, second only to Theodore Roosevelt , who assumed the office at 42. He was also the first Catholic president and the first president born in the 20 th century.

Delivering his legendary inaugural address on January 20, 1961, Kennedy sought to inspire all Americans to more active citizenship. “Ask not what your country can do for you,” he famously said. “Ask what you can do for your country.” During his brief tenure as president, Kennedy did much for America.

Foreign Affairs

Kennedy’s greatest accomplishments came in the arena of foreign affairs. Capitalizing on the spirit of activism he had helped to ignite, Kennedy created the Peace Corps by executive order in 1961. By the end of the century, over 170,000 Peace Corps volunteers would serve in 135 countries. Also in 1961, Kennedy created the Alliance for Progress to foster greater economic ties with Latin America, in hopes of alleviating poverty and thwarting the spread of communism in the region.

Kennedy also presided over a series of international crises. On April 15, 1961, he authorized a covert mission to overthrow leftist Cuban leader Fidel Castro with a group of 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban refugees. Known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion , the mission proved an unmitigated failure, causing Kennedy great embarrassment.

In August 1961, to stem massive waves of emigration from Soviet-dominated East Germany to American ally West Germany via the divided city of Berlin, Nikita Khrushchev ordered the construction of the Berlin Wall , which became the foremost symbol of the Cold War.

However, the greatest crisis of the Kennedy administration was the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Discovering that the Soviet Union had sent ballistic nuclear missiles to Cuba, Kennedy blockaded the island and vowed to defend the United States at any cost. After several of the tensest days in history, during which the world seemed on the brink of nuclear annihilation, the Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles in return for Kennedy’s promise to not invade Cuba and to remove American missiles from Turkey.

Eight months later, in June 1963, Kennedy successfully negotiated the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty with Great Britain and the Soviet Union, helping to ease Cold War tensions. It was one of his proudest accomplishments.

Domestic Policy

President Kennedy’s record on domestic policy was rather mixed. Taking office in the midst of a recession, he proposed sweeping income tax cuts, raising the minimum wage, and instituting new social programs to improve education, health care, and mass transit. However, hampered by lukewarm relations with Congress, Kennedy only achieved part of his agenda: a modest increase in the minimum wage and watered down tax cuts.

The most contentious domestic issue of Kennedy’s presidency was civil rights . Constrained by Southern Democrats in Congress who remained stridently opposed to civil rights for Black citizens, Kennedy offered only tepid support for civil rights reforms early in his term.

Nevertheless, in September 1962, Kennedy sent his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy to Mississippi to use the National Guard and federal marshals to escort and defend civil rights activist James Meredith as he became the first Black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi on October 1, 1962.

Near the end of 1963, in the wake of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr. ’s “I Have a Dream” speech , Kennedy finally sent a civil rights bill to Congress. One of the last acts of his presidency and his life, Kennedy’s bill eventually passed as the landmark Civil Rights Act in 1964.

On November 21, 1963, President Kennedy flew to Fort Worth, Texas, for a campaign appearance. The next day, November 22, Kennedy, along with his wife and Texas governor John Connally, rode through cheering crowds in downtown Dallas in a Lincoln Continental convertible. From an upstairs window of the Texas School Book Depository building, a 24-year-old warehouse worker named Lee Harvey Oswald , a former Marine with Soviet sympathies, fired upon the car, hitting the president twice. Kennedy died at Dallas’ Parkland Memorial Hospital shortly thereafter at age 46.

A Dallas nightclub owner named Jack Ruby assassinated Oswald days later while he was being transferred between jails. The death of President Kennedy was an unspeakable national tragedy, and to this date, many people remember with unsettling vividness the exact moment they learned of his death. While conspiracy theories have swirled ever since Kennedy’s assassination, the official version of events remains the most plausible: Oswald acted alone.

For few former presidents is the dichotomy between public and scholarly opinion so vast. To the American public, as well as his first historians, Kennedy is a hero—a visionary politician who, if not for his untimely death, might have averted the political and social turmoil of the late 1960s. In public-opinion polls, Kennedy consistently ranks with Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln as among the most beloved American presidents of all time. Critiquing this outpouring of adoration, many more recent Kennedy scholars have derided Kennedy’s womanizing and lack of personal morals and argued that, as a leader, he was more style than substance.

In the end, no one can ever truly know what type of president Kennedy would have become had he finished out his first term or been reelected. Nor can we say how the course of history might have been different had he lived into old age. As historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote , it was “as if Lincoln had been killed six months after Gettysburg or Franklin Roosevelt at the end of 1935 or Truman before the Marshall Plan.”

The most enduring image of Kennedy’s presidency, and of his whole life, is that of Camelot , the idyllic castle of the legendary King Arthur . As his wife, Jackie Kennedy, said after his death, “There’ll be great presidents again, and the Johnsons are wonderful—they’ve been wonderful to me—but there’ll never be another Camelot again.”

On October 26, 2017, President Donald Trump ordered the release of 2,800 records related to John F. Kennedy’s assassination. The move came at the expiration of a 25-year waiting period signed into law in 1992, which allowed the declassification of the documents provided that doing so wouldn’t hurt intelligence, military operations, or foreign relations.

Trump’s release of the documents came on the final day he was legally allowed to do so. However, he didn’t release all of the documents, as officials from the FBI, CIA, and other agencies had successfully lobbied for the chance to review particularly sensitive material for an additional 180 days.

• For time and the world, do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past, or the present, are certain to miss the future.
• Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
• We need men who can dream of things that never were and not ask why.
• If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.
• Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.
• 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.
• The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high—to permit the customary passions of political debate. We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future... For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.
• If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
• The cost of freedom is always high—and Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose and that is the path of surrender or submission.
• We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
• The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.
• Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
• Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
• [O]ur most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

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Home / Essay Samples / Government / John F. Kennedy / JFK’s Legacy as a Good President

JFK's Legacy as a Good President

• Category: Government
• Topic: John F. Kennedy

Pages: 1 (515 words)

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