John Fitzgerald Kennedy

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Overview - John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy Historic World Leaders, 1994 Updated: April 05, 2013 Born: May 29, 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts, United States Died: November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas, United States Nationality: American Occupation: President (Government)

"The tragedy of John Fitzgerald Kennedy was greater than the accomplishment, but in the end the tragedy enhances the accomplishment and revives the hope." ---James Reston

1938 Joseph P. Kennedy appointed ambassador to England 1939 Poland invaded by Hitler; England and France declared war 1941 JFK commissioned U.S. Navy ensign; Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor 1943 PT-109 sunk in the Pacific 1946 Elected to U.S. House of Representatives (Massachusetts) 1952 Elected to U.S. Senate (Massachusetts) 1956 Defeated for vice presidential nomination 1960 Elected president by extremely narrow margin 1961 Announced Peace Corps and Alliance for Progress; Laotian Crisis and military alert; Cuba invaded at Bay of Pigs; U.S. Marshals ordered to Alabama after violence against "Freedom Riders"; Summit meeting with Khrushchev; Berlin Crisis; General Taylor reported U.S. aid could bring military victory in Vietnam 1962 JFK forced a rollback on steel prices; U.S. troops used to integrate University of Mississippi; Cuban Missile Crisis; Executive Order signed barring racial discrimination in public housing 1963 JFK submitted civil rights bill to Congress; Civil Rights March on Washington; Nuclear Test Ban Treaty ratified; Diem of South Vietnam assassinated in military coup; Kennedy assassinated in Dallas, Texas 1964 Lyndon Johnson elected president; Robert Kennedy elected to U.S. Senate 1968 Robert Kennedy announced candidacy for presidency; Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated in Memphis; Robert Kennedy assassinated in Los Angeles

Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917; assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963; son of Joseph Patrick and Rose (Fitzgerald) Kennedy; brother of Robert Francis Kennedy and Edward Moore Kennedy; married: Jacqueline Bouvier; children: Caroline Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg and John F. Kennedy Jr. Predecessor: Dwight David Eisenhower. Successor: Lyndon Baines Johnson.

John F. Kennedy left an immeasurable imprint on America in the latter part of the 20th century, despite being president for just over a thousand days, despite a modest record of accomplishments and a penchant for stirring crises, and despite certain character flaws revealed after his death. Remembered less for what he did than for what he might have done, Kennedy was assassinated at the peak of his political power, and thus unable to fulfill the high expectations he generated with moving speeches and unmatched personal magnetism and popularity. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the second of nine children born into the extraordinary family of Joseph Patrick Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. "Perhaps no American family," historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote in The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, "has had a more vivid and powerful impact on the life of their times." America's fascination with the Kennedys goes beyond their public achievements. The Kennedy tale, according to Goodwin, is "the spiral compound of glory, achievement, degradation and almost mythical tragedy."

The Kennedy tale is woven around their passion for power and prestige, a passion that emerges from their Irish-American heritage. "The main motif of Irish history" in the United States, according to William Shannon, is "the search for power." Empowerment and recognition for the Kennedys came through personal wealth and politics. John Kennedy's great-grandfather, Patrick Kennedy, emigrated from Ireland to Boston in 1849, worked as a barrel maker, and died of cholera in 1858. His only son, Patrick Joseph (P.J.) Kennedy, struggled up from poverty to success in the saloon and liquor-import businesses, branched out into banking, became a backroom political operator and forged a tenuous alliance with John Francis ("Honey Fitz") Fitzgerald, the quintessential merry Irish "politico" who was elected to three terms in Congress and two terms as mayor of Boston.

P.J. Kennedy's son, Joseph P. Kennedy and Fitzgerald's daughter, Rose, were married in 1914, two years after Joe's graduation from Harvard. They first resided in Brookline, a middle-class Boston suburb. During their early years, the nine children were nominally under Rose's charge. As they matured, Joe's involvement with his children's lives intensified. He exercised, according to Goodwin, "an almost primitive dominion over his children's youthful souls."

Investments in various enterprises, including banking, ship building, real estate, liquor importing, and motion pictures, made Joseph Kennedy one of the richest men in America. To be nearer the financial action and to escape the presumed Yankee prejudices against Irish Catholics, he moved his family to an upper-class New York City suburb in 1927.

The Kennedys passed the years of the Great Depression in privileged and luxurious isolation from America's social and economic torment. Kennedy provided financial backing to Franklin Roosevelt's successful presidential campaign in 1932 and was named to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission (1934) and the Maritime Commission (1937). In December of 1937, Roosevelt gave Kennedy the prestigious position he craved, the ambassadorship to Great Britain.

Joe Kennedy's impatient demeanor, combined with his brusque, profane, and blunt manner caused problems for President Franklin Roosevelt and, later, cast shadows over his sons' political careers. During the critical months preceding the onset of World War II, Kennedy openly sided with British "appeasers" who advocated concessions to Hitler at the Munich conference of 1938. He indiscreetly revealed anti-Semitic attitudes, crudely maligned Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the British royal family, and clumsily managed the few tasks entrusted to him by an annoyed Roosevelt. After angrily confronting Kennedy, Roosevelt told his wife, "I never want to see that sonofabitch again as long as I live."

His own public career ending in 1940, Kennedy devoted himself to his sons' prospects. His goal: to make Joe Junior president of the United States. Joe Junior and "Jack," as John was called, shared the male Kennedys' good looks: strong, straight jaws, high cheekbones, gray-blue animated eyes, and reddish-brown hair. Young Joe was taller, stronger and two years older. Jack rebelled against his brother's domineering and overbearing manner. They fought constantly. Young Joe always won.

John followed his older brother through Choate and Harvard, where Joe's successes loomed before him. Young Joe accepted unquestioningly his father's values and code of manly conduct, which stressed self-control, physical toughness, and, above all, winning. "The win-win-win compulsion," historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. observed, "dominated the household." John was competitive and perseverant, but less intense and not as obsessed with winning.

Cool and laconic, John Kennedy carried into adulthood a detached and analytical outlook on life. Recurrent illnesses during his youth forced him to spend many hours alone reading in bed. Fascinated with the romantic figures of history and an ardent observer of current events, John was, nonetheless, an indifferent student until 1940, his senior year at Harvard. Stimulated by the calamitous events in Europe and fortified with his experiences as Ambassador Kennedy's traveling secretary, John wrote a Harvard senior thesis on Britain's unpreparedness for war, which was published as Why England Slept.

Undecided on a career, but certain of eventual American involvement in the expanding war, John was accepted into the navy, which overlooked his poor medical history. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Ensign John Kennedy was assigned to Naval Intelligence in Washington. There he began an affair with Inga Arvad (Mrs. Paul Fejos), a beautiful, twice-married Dane, once photographed with Hitler. Suspecting (incorrectly) Inga was a German agent, the FBI recorded their liaisons.

Kennedy was reassigned to sea duty on PT boats, the small, fast crafts used to torpedo large ships. On August 2, 1943, a Japanese destroyer rammed Kennedy's PT-109 as it lay dead in Pacific waters. Decorated for his actions in rescuing surviving crew members, Kennedy was declared a "hero" by the New York Times. John Hersey's account, first published in the New Yorker, was reprinted in Reader's Digest, and widely circulated in each of John Kennedy's election campaigns.

Kennedy's Brother Joe Is Killed A year later, brother Joe was killed instantly when his dynamite-laden aircraft exploded while on a dangerous, perhaps foolhardy volunteer mission in Europe. John's father was devastated. He had placed all his hopes on his eldest son. When, in September 1944, John's sister, Kathleen, learned her English husband was killed in action, she wrote: "Life is so cruel. Luckily I am a Kennedy."

John Kennedy now felt an "unnamed responsibility" to his parents, brothers, and sisters. In 1946, Joe Kennedy sent John into public life "to take Joe's place," to run for the same seat in Congress John's grandfather "Honey Fitz" held nearly five decades earlier. The Kennedys were a new force in American politics. Relying on Joe Kennedy's money, an imaginative use of the old Boston Irish political machine, a powerful public relations machine, and the personal involvement of the glamorous Kennedy family, the Kennedys bypassed the Democratic Party organization. John Kennedy entered politics without an agenda or a public philosophy. He knew little of Boston's people and problems and had to rent an apartment to establish legal residence. Kennedy ran on his name, youth, war record, family connections, and raw ambition. He won convincingly.

Kennedy was an indifferent congressman, involved in few debates and often absent. Gaunt, sallow, and alarmingly thin, he was diagnosed in 1947 as having Addison's disease, a degenerative condition of the adrenal glands. Given only a few years to live, he became fatalistic. When Kathleen Kennedy was killed in an airplane crash in May 1948, John felt "trapped and betrayed." His health and spirits greatly improved when he began regular cortisone treatments in 1950.

Robert Kennedy wrote sympathetically of his brother, "At least one half of the days that he spent on this earth were days of intense physical pain." But Joe Kennedy viewed his son's medical problems as political liabilities, provoking a "crisis of explanation" to be covered over, along with daughter Rosemary's mental disabilities, daughter Kathleen's affair with a married English Protestant, son Teddy's driving record, and other family flaws, both real and imagined. He used his public relations apparatus and his friendships with people in the print media to suppress undesirable items and to cultivate positive images.

John Kennedy challenged Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the consummate Boston Brahmin, for the U.S. Senate in 1952. This election, like all Kennedy campaigns, became a personality contest. Neither candidate dared challenge the anti-Communist hysteria bred by the Cold War and manifested in the outrageous behavior of Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose rampaging campaign of personal vilification violated most norms of common decency. Republicans won most elections in 1952, propelled by the enormous popularity of their presidential standard bearer, General Dwight Eisenhower, the architect of Allied victory in Europe in World War II. Kennedy's unexpected victory gave him new stature in the Democratic Party.

In 1954, John underwent two dangerous, near-fatal operations on his ailing back. During his recovery, he and several aides wrote a book, Profiles in Courage, which received the Pulitzer Prize. Kennedy accepted the prize as if the work were wholly his own, thus arousing lingering suspicions about "the extent to which his substance was fabricated by illusion." At the 1956 Democratic Convention, Kennedy came close to winning the vice presidential nomination, but Democratic liberals tipped the balance the other way. Eleanor Roosevelt, for one, wished Kennedy had shown "less profile and more courage" toward McCarthyism and other key policy questions.

John Kennedy relied upon a high-powered public relations push and his father's wealth and contacts to sweep through the presidential primaries, line up the political bosses to deliver the necessary delegates, and win the Democratic presidential nomination on the convention's first ballot in 1960. Issuing a call to "national greatness," Kennedy spoke of sacrifice and a "New Frontier."

The Republicans nominated Eisenhower's vice president, Richard Nixon. Kennedy forced Nixon to defend the Eisenhower record. Claiming the Republicans were responsible for a national lethargy, Kennedy promised to "get America moving again." Although he knew otherwise, Kennedy charged that Soviet advances in rocketry had produced a "missile gap" threatening American security. He chided Eisenhower for permitting Communists to gain a foothold in the Western Hemisphere after Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba. Kennedy Defeats Nixon by 12,000 Votes Had an additional 12,000 (out of 68.8 million) voters in six key states reversed their votes in the 1960 election, Nixon would have been the victor. During the campaign--the first to focus almost entirely on the efficacy of Television--Kennedy and Nixon had engaged in four televised debates that revealed few substantive differences between them. Kennedy, however, appeared the more poised and sophisticated. He edged Nixon by carrying Texas and five Southern states (due to his selection of Texas senator Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate); by carrying 68% of the African American vote (due to a well-timed telephone call to Mrs. Martin Luther King Jr., consoling her on her husband's false imprisonment); and by carrying 78% of the Catholic vote. Kennedy won the election by a paper- thin margin.

Kennedy launched his presidency on a note of ringing eloquence and stirring expectations, proclaiming: "Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans." To the Soviet Union, America's Cold War antagonist, he said, "Let us begin anew--remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate." He challenged Americans with this memorable peroration: "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country."

His inaugural speech emphasized America's global role, created extensive obligations, reflected his exalted view of the presidency, and set the tone for Kennedy's administration:

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 to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge--and more.

As "Leader of the Free World," Kennedy felt responsible for stopping Communist advances wherever they might occur. When Premier Nikita Khrushchev announced Soviet intentions to support "wars of national liberation" against non-Communist regimes around the world, Kennedy responded by reshaping American military and intelligence policies to create a "flexible response" to counter Communist insurgency. Fearing any sign of weakness, in April 1961 he authorized execution of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plan inherited from Eisenhower to support anti-Castro forces to invade Cuba. The invasion failed miserably at the Bay of Pigs.

After the Cuban humiliation, Vietnam became the litmus test for Kennedy's counterinsurgency program. Determined to stop North Vietnamese attempts to unify the divided country under communism, Kennedy established a military advisory command to assist South Vietnam in resisting Communist infiltration. By November of 1963, he had substantially increased American military commitment to South Vietnam and created the necessary conditions for further American involvement, which occurred under President Johnson upon the recommendation of Kennedy's former advisors.

The Cuban Missile Crisis Recurring global crises (Laos, Vietnam, Berlin, Dominican Republic, Cuba, and the Congo) led Kennedy to request a massive buildup of nuclear missiles and an increase in conventional military armaments. He raised the specter of nuclear war with the creation of a civil defense and bomb-shelter program. War nearly occurred in October of 1962 when Kennedy confronted Khrushchev over the presence of missile sites in Cuba. The world tottered on the brink. After two weeks, a compromise was reached: in consideration of the Soviet withdrawal of missiles in Cuba, the United States withdrew its missiles in Turkey.

On the positive side, the Peace Corps, Food for Peace, and Agency for International Development improved America's image in emerging nations of Africa and Asia. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress raised hopes in Latin America. The atmospheric test nuclear ban treaty of 1963 was a hopeful, but limited, first step toward arms controls.

Kennedy gave less attention to domestic affairs. His inaugural address contained not a word about race relations or the civil rights movement. Robert Kennedy admitted they had "lost no sleep over Negroes." Advocating gradualism and restraint, the Kennedys first urged leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. to be patient and avoid incidents harmful to America's image abroad. Escalating crises sucked the Kennedys into the vortex of the movement.

Robert Kennedy sent U.S. marshals to protect "Freedom Riders" who challenged Southern laws racially segregating passengers on interstate transportation. The Kennedys personally intervened to assure the integration of the Universities of Mississippi and Alabama. An affirmative action program was established to expedite hiring of African Americans in government agencies. Kennedy belatedly signed an executive order ending segregation in federal housing. Pushed by his brother, he introduced a comprehensive civil rights bill and told a national television audience in June of 1963: "A great change is at hand, and our task, our obligation, is to make that revolution, that change, peaceful and constructive for all."

John Kennedy endorsed and supported the August 1963 March on Washington, where hundreds of thousands of civil rights advocates heard Martin Luther King Jr.'s stirring "I Have a Dream" speech. But Congress was unmoved. Kennedy's civil rights bill floundered until after his death, and civil rights leaders decried his "token" efforts.

Kennedy's achievements in the realm of domestic reforms were comparatively meager. Cautious and prudent, he seldom challenged the forces of conservatism deadlocking the legislative process. He updated commitments to traditional Democratic programs, such as public housing, minimum wages, and Social Security benefits, but his proposals for federal aid to education, a tax cut to stimulate spending, medical assistance for the aged, and a program to combat poverty were in limbo or not fully formulated at his death.

More memorable is the special grace and style Kennedy brought to the presidency. His good looks, intellect, humor, unflappable manner, and wit loaned a unique dimension to his presidency. Kennedy's well-bred, stylish wife, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, added more than beauty and elegance. She made the White House a cultural and artistic center, successfully camouflaging the president's low-brow preferences. After John Kennedy's death, Jacqueline suggested the brief, shining moments of his presidency were reminiscent of the legends of Camelot, a suggestion dutiful journalists and historians vigorously pursued. The image of Camelot was tarnished by later revelations of difficulties within the Kennedy marriage, largely attributed to his reckless and persistent pursuit of young women. Kennedy's sexual indiscretions posed a potential threat to national security, made him vulnerable to organized crime interests, left him beholden to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and compromised the moral legitimacy of the presidency. Even after these affairs were disclosed, a Newsweek and Gallup poll of 1983 revealed Kennedy was still America's most popular president.

Kennedy Is Assassinated John Kennedy's assassination provoked hundreds of studies and eight investigations without yet being fully resolved. The FBI and the Warren Commission (chaired by Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren) quickly concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, a Communist sympathizer, had alone killed the president. Oswald was himself shot to death in the Dallas police station in full view of a national television audience by Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner with then unknown connections to organized crime.

The Warren Commission Report was met with a flood of skeptical responses, counter-theories, and claims of evidentiary errors and cover-ups. Investigations in 1978 by the House Select Committee on Assassinations supported most of the Warren Report findings, but concluded "on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy." They were unable to determine the extent of the conspiracy. The mystery of John Kennedy's death, combined with its tragic circumstances and memories of the depth of the nation's grief, serves to perpetuate his place in romantic legend.

The Kennedy legacy was carried forward, amplified, and adorned with greater passion by brother Robert, before he, too, was assassinated in the midst of his campaign for the presidency in 1968. Edward (Teddy) Kennedy tried to pick up his brothers' mantle, but fell from public grace when a female companion was drowned when the car he was driving went off a bridge near Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts, in 1969. Inspired by John Kennedy's idealism, countless others answered his call and asked what they could do for their country.