John Fitzgerald Kennedy Biography

On November 22, 1963, when he was hardly past his first thousand days in office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by an assassin's bullets as his motorcade wound through Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was the youngest man elected President; he was the youngest to die.

Of Irish descent, he was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917. Graduating from Harvard in 1940, he entered the Navy. In 1943, when his PT boat was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer, Kennedy, despite grave injuries, led the survivors through perilous waters to safety.

Back from the war, he became a Democratic Congressman from the Boston area, advancing in 1953 to the Senate. He married Jacqueline Bouvier on September 12, 1953. In 1955, while recuperating from a back operation, he wrote Profiles in Courage, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history.

In 1956 Kennedy almost gained the Democratic nomination for Vice President, and four years later was a first-ballot nominee for President. Millions watched his television debates with the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon. Winning by a narrow margin in the popular vote, Kennedy became the first Roman Catholic President.

His Inaugural Address offered the memorable injunction: "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country." As President, he set out to redeem his campaign pledge to get America moving again. His economic programs launched the country on its longest sustained expansion since World War II; before his death, he laid plans for a massive assault on persisting pockets of privation and poverty.

Responding to ever more urgent demands, he took vigorous action in the cause of equal rights, calling for new civil rights legislation. His vision of America extended to the quality of the national culture and the central role of the arts in a vital society.

He wished America to resume its old mission as the first nation dedicated to the revolution of human rights. With the Alliance for Progress and the Peace Corps, he brought American idealism to the aid of developing nations. But the hard reality of the Communist challenge remained.

Shortly after his inauguration, Kennedy permitted a band of Cuban exiles, already armed and trained, to invade their homeland. The attempt to overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro was a failure. Soon thereafter, the Soviet Union renewed its campaign against West Berlin. Kennedy replied by reinforcing the Berlin garrison and increasing the Nation's military strength, including new efforts in outer space. Confronted by this reaction, Moscow, after the erection of the Berlin Wall, relaxed its pressure in central Europe.

Instead, the Russians now sought to install nuclear missiles in Cuba. When this was discovered by air reconnaissance in October 1962, Kennedy imposed a quarantine on all offensive weapons bound for Cuba. While the world trembled on the brink of nuclear war, the Russians backed down and agreed to take the missiles away. The American response to the Cuban crisis evidently persuaded Moscow of the futility of nuclear blackmail.

Kennedy now contended that both sides had a vital interest in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and slowing the arms race--a contention which led to the test ban treaty of 1963. The months after the Cuban crisis showed significant progress toward his goal of "a world of law and free choice, banishing the world of war and coercion." His administration thus saw the beginning of new hope for both the equal rights of Americans and the peace of the world.

What We Can Learn From JFK

Time Magazine, in its 6th Annual Making of America Issue of July 2, 2007, has several outstanding articles dealing with the JFK legacy, calling him a "prudent warrior and timeless icon." David Talbot, who has a best selling book out now about the Kennedy brothers, wrote one of the articles, "Warrior for Peace," which states that JFK's presidency included some of the tensest moments of the cold war, but he was convinced that our true power came from democratic ideals, not military might. You can view the full article text here.

Kennedy & the Nuclear Issue

Nearly forty years ago, President John F. Kennedy and his advisers voiced growing concern over China's nascent nuclear program and the threat it posed to U.S. national security. Since then, questions have lingered over precisely what steps the administration had considered to deal with this threat. Based on an exhaustive study of newly declassified documents, William Burr and Jeffrey Richelson of the National Security Archive report that the Kennedy administration embarked on a huge intelligence effort that included U-2 flights, satellite reconnaissance, and even talks with the Soviet Union on joint action. By the time of China's first nuclear test on October 16, 1964, however, Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, and his advisers had decided against direct confrontation with China, having concluded that not only was a nuclear China a threat the United States could live with, but that a confrontation with Beijing on the eve of a presidential election might prove politically unwise. In their conclusion, Burr and Richelson ponder the implications of their analysis for the current debate in the United States over China's nuclear program.

This article has great relevancy today, with respect to the current administration's posture toward the spread of nuclear weapons in Iran, North Korea, India and Pakistan, and with what this administration might garner from the thoughts and discussions of the Kennedy administration in this area. Full Article Text

Kennedy: The enduring allure

Below are excerpts from an article by Veteran BBC correspondent Charles Wheeler who looks at why a younger generation is still fascinated by the story of John F Kennedy.

What did he have that made him - and still makes him - I'm groping for the right word here: attractive, exceptional? Was it his good looks and vitality? Jackie? The kids, playing hide and seek under the Oval Office desk?

Yes, glamour was part of it. Coming after the fatherly Eisenhower, who whiled away his later White House years playing golf, it did seem a new age. And the way his life was cut short in Dallas is part of it too.

I have always felt that the character of American presidents matters as much to us outsiders as it does to the Americans who elect them. Take Franklin D. Roosevelt.

What he did and did not do in the 1940s kept us on edge because it was crucial to our survival.

Take Kennedy and his handling of the Cuban missile crisis. He was a president who thought ahead, listened to his aides, knew what advice to reject and averted a nuclear war.

So what was it that makes John Kennedy stand taller than his successors? First, I think, the complete absence from his makeup of dogma, of ideology.

He had the courage of his convictions and a subtle, inquiring mind.

True, he could be inconsistent. Before a wildly enthusiastic crowd of West Berliners in 1963, minutes after he had seen the Wall for himself, Kennedy launched a harsh attack on Communism.

"There are some who say Communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin!

There are some who say we can work with the Communists. Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen! Let them come to Berlin!"

This was the Kennedy who, less than three weeks before in a speech at a university in Washington, had appealed to Americans to re-examine their attitude to the Soviet Union and the Cold War.

"No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. We all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."

Kennedy's university speech was largely unreported and is seldom remembered today. He ended it with a prediction.

"History teaches us that enmities between nations do not last forever; the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations."

It came true, a quarter of a century later. Above all, Kennedy was a man ahead of his time.

What Would J.F.K. Have Done?

An interesting part of the new documentary, "In Search of Kennedy," is a "what if" component, whereby the director Chuck Workman "creates" two newscasts-one as if JFK lived after an assassination attempt and defeated Barry Goldwater in 1968, the other upon his death in 1977. One of the lingering controversies attached to the Kennedy assassination is how the "world" would be different, if any, had JFK lived to see a second term in office. Now, two Kennedy advisors, Theodore Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., have attempted in a recent New York Times op-ed piece to infer JFK's possible actions vis-a-vis the present Iraqi conflict. What follows is an excerpt from the article. The entire article can be viewed by clicking the link at the bottom of this post. Full Article Text

What We Could Learn From JFK by Dr. Fallon

Back in NY, when I was teaching at Molloy College, I had a poster hanging over my desk from the 1960 presidential campaign of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. It said "Leadership for the 60s." I remember thinking back then, "That's just the kind of leadership we need in the 21st century," and that thought seems more true every day.

From Ireland's Examiner comes an essay on JFK and personal responsibility that our current president should read--or have Harriet Miers read to him. It looks at Kennedy's handling of the "Bay of Pigs" fiasco and points out, implicitly, how things have changed in America in the 42 years since JFK's death. Kennedy was barely three months in office at the time, so he could have blamed the CIA or his predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, whose administration was primarily responsible for the planning of the Bay of Pigs operation, but he did not try to put the blame on anyone else. Kennedy accepted full responsibility for the disaster.The CIA had handed the President bad intelligence about the state of public opinion in Cuba, saying the people would enthusiastically support an invasion to overthrow Fidel Castro. He told his Vice President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Lyndon, youÌve got to remember weÌre all in this and that, when I accepted responsibility for this operation, I took the entire responsibility on myself, and I think we should have no sort of passing of the buck or backbiting, however justified.ÓIf there is no moral lesson in this for Mr. Bush, perhaps he could find a political one: His acceptance of responsibility for the Bay of Pigs seemed to increase his charm. The next Gallup Poll showed that his administration had a then unprecedented 82% support. Kennedy tossed his advance copy of the poll aside. It's just like Eisenhower, he said. The worse I do, the more popular I get. He had been badly advised and quietly moved to get rid of those who had been so wrong about the Bay of Pigs, but he never blamed anybody publicly.

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