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October 22 - October 24, 2020
You can bring out those French optimists who believed in the Maginot line, etc. You might bring out that it is necessary for politicians to stress the bright side of things—they are in politics and must get the people’s vote—you don’t care what people think—you are interested only in the long-run point of view of what is best for this country. …
It’s a sad state of affairs in the world today when by looking at the worst it’s always possible to be right. It’s sad, but it’s true.
People get so used to talking about billions of dollars and millions of soldiers that thousands of dead sounds like drops in the bucket. But if those thousands want to live as much as the ten I saw—they should measure their words with great, great care.
The only way you can get the proper perspective on its progress is put away the headlines for a month and watch us move on the map.
He won the respect of officers and men alike by his disregard of himself and a quiet effective courage that manifested itself many times.
Lyndon Johnson delighting in telling a joke about Kennedy’s good fortune in having received a glowing medical report—from his pediatrician.
“The New Frontier of which I speak,” he told the delegates, “is not a set of promises—it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them.”
More than seventy million people watched the first-ever televised presidential debate.
Most important, as Richard Reeves observed, Kennedy “looked as presidential as the man who had been Vice President for the past eight years.” Studies later found that of the four million people who made up their minds based on the first television debate, three million voted for Kennedy.
I myself take a differing attitude toward several of the matters which you raised
you have had the constant patience to give the soft word when the natural inclination would have been to spit in someone’s eye.
But on this question—as on all other important issues—differences of opinion should be explored with responsible debate and with a full appreciation of the gravity of the question.
The question is not one of political courage. A man might courageously follow either course of action. The question is, which course of action is right.
At the heart of the article was Kennedy’s belief that physical fitness was very much the business of the federal government. And with weeks of his taking office, the President’s Council on Physical Fitness launched a massive awareness campaign that included thousands of posters, brochures, pamphlets, television and radio kits, and exercise books all designed to make physical fitness, especially for schoolchildren, a national agenda. The emphasis on physical fitness was embraced even by the nation’s comic strip creators, seventeen of whom took up the subject, most notably Charles Schulz whose
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Despite congressional support, many were convinced that Kennedy’s goal could not be met. Yet within a year both Alan Shepard and Virgil Grissom were launched into space. Then, on February 20, 1962, came John Glenn’s historic 75,679-mile, three-orbital flight.
September 12, 1962, speech at Rice University, in Houston, Texas. “We set sail on this new sea,” he stated, “because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be used for the progress of all people.”
In an early letter to us from Colombia he stated, “I had rather lose my life trying to help someone than to have to lose it looking down a gun barrel at them.”
Kennedy’s presidency would be marked by an almost continuous exchange of letters with his chief cold war adversary, Soviet chairman Nikita Khrushchev. It would, in fact, be this unprecedented exchange that would seriously affect the course of history. Not all of the correspondence between the two men would be antagonistic, as evidenced by this letter from Kennedy thanking Khrushchev for having sent Caroline the puppy Pushinka, whose mother had flown in space.
By Kennedy’s second year in office, he and Eleanor Roosevelt had developed a warm, supportive relationship.
As both a student of history and a statesman, Kennedy was an ardent admirer of Winston Churchill. So much so that early in his presidency he began to advocate for the bestowal of American citizenship on the legendary British leader whose alliance with the United States had been forged in World War II. On August 14, 1961, the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the historic Atlantic Charter, Kennedy sent Churchill a telegram commenting on both the importance and the enduring legacy of the Charter.
On August 19, 1961, Halle wrote to Kennedy stressing the urgency of granting citizenship to Churchill, a letter also notable for its unique glimpse into the aging Churchill, his thoughts, and his surroundings.
Finally, in the beginning of April 1963, it became clear that the U.S. Congress was about to enact Public Law 88-6 declaring “that the President of the United States is hereby authorized and directed to declare that Sir Winston Churchill shall be an honorary citizen of the United States of America.” Informed of the impending act, the ever-eloquent Churchill wrote to Kennedy.
At the same time he wrote to a Mississippi congressman declaring that the most effective tool for upholding the nation’s laws was “your courage to accept those laws with which you disagree as well as those with which you agree.”
You have a great tradition to uphold, a tradition of honor and courage, won on the field of battle and on the gridiron as well as the university campus. You have a new opportunity to show that you are men of patriotism and integrity.
There is in short no reason why the books on this case cannot now be quickly and quietly closed in the manner directed by the Court. Let us preserve both the law and the peace and then healing those wounds that are within we can turn to the greater crises that are without and stand united as one people in our pledge to man’s freedom. I appreciate hearing from you. Sincerely, John Kennedy
“Our Constitution is color blind,” wrote Mr. Justice Harlan before the turn of the century, “and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.”
It hampers our world leadership by contradicting at home the message we preach abroad.
The basic reason is because it is right.
It is, moreover, inconsistent with the democratic principle that no man should be denied employment commensurate with his abilities because of his race or creed or ancestry.
“When I ran for the Presidency of the United States …” John Kennedy stated, “I couldn’t realize … how heavy and constant would be the burdens.”
He took full responsibility for the fiasco, stating, “There’s an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.”
“The two most powerful nations had been squared off against each other,” Khrushchev stated, “each with its finger on the button.” “It is insane,” Kennedy said, “that two men sitting on opposite sides of the world should be able to decide to bring an end to civilization.”
Calling for an end to the cold war, he said that “in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we share this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
It is to be noted that this declaration states that the measures taken by the East German authorities are “in the interests of the German peoples themselves”. It is difficult to see any basis for this statement,
Whether we wish it or not, and for better or worse, we are the leaders of the world’s two greatest rival powers, each with the ability to inflict great destruction on the other and to do great damage to the rest of the world in the process. We therefore have a special responsibility—greater than that held by any of our predecessors in the pre-nuclear age—to exercise our power with fullest possible understanding of the other’s vital interests and commitments.
more than ever, one of Kennedy’s most trusted advisers. Stating that he was aware of Kennedy’s “distaste for diagnosis without remedy,
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
Only a month earlier, Adlai Stevenson had been mobbed and spat upon after delivering a United Nations Day speech to a Dallas crowd.
When Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas told him directly, “Dallas is a very dangerous place. … I wouldn’t go there,” and “Don’t you go,” Kennedy responded by stating that if any president ever reached the point where he was afraid to visit any American city, he should immediately resign.
Although the public was never aware of it, the man who projected such health and good humor relied heavily on drugs and pills, needed three hot baths a day, and spent many days in bed.
By the time he entered the White House, he was regularly taking heavy doses of cortisone both orally and through injection.
On June 16, 1963, Ben-Gurion, who had been Israel’s leader since its inception in 1948, resigned from office. Many believed his resignation was due in great measure to his dispute with Kennedy over Dimona.
