John F. Kennedy

E

Presidential Election of 1960

Kennedy wanted to win the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination, and almost as soon as the 1956 election was over, he began to work towards it. He faced several major obstacles. Many party leaders considered him too young and too inexperienced for the presidency. Many also doubted that a Roman Catholic could win a national election in a country that was mostly Protestant. In addition, Kennedy still lacked the support of many Democratic liberals, who backed either Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota or Adlai Stevenson.

Kennedy announced his candidacy in early 1960. By the time the Democratic National Convention opened in July, he had won seven primary victories (at this time primary election results were not binding upon convention delegations). His most important had been in West Virginia, where he proved that a Roman Catholic could win in a predominantly Protestant state.

When the convention opened, it appeared that Kennedy’s only serious challenge for the nomination would come from the Senate majority leader, Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. However, Johnson only had strong support among Southern delegates. Kennedy won the nomination on the first ballot and then persuaded Johnson to become his running mate. Two weeks later the Republicans nominated incumbent vice-president Richard Nixon for president and ambassador to the United Nations Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., whom Kennedy had defeated for the Senate in 1952, for vice-president.

Although his opponents refused to make Kennedy’s religion an issue, it was an important factor in many areas of the country, and one that Kennedy decided to approach head-on. Many Protestants feared that a Catholic might be subject to the orders of the head of the Roman Catholic church, the Pope. In a speech before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, Kennedy said: “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute... where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from... [an] ecclesiastical source.” Kennedy also promised to “get the nation moving again” with a political programme he called the New Frontier, a name that invoked memories of the New Deal programme of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The two candidates faced each other in four nationally televised debates—the first in US history to be broadcast on the television. Kennedy’s manner, especially in the first debate, seemed to eliminate the charge that he was too young and too inexperienced to serve as president, and many believed these debates gave Kennedy victory. Another important element of the campaign was the support Kennedy received from blacks in important Northern states, especially Illinois and Pennsylvania. They supported him in part because he had tried to obtain the release of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been jailed for taking part in a civil rights demonstration in Georgia, and because he seemed to offer the greater hope for action on civil rights.

The election drew a record 69 million voters to the polls, but Kennedy won by only 113,000 votes. He won 49.7 per cent of the popular vote, and Nixon won 49.6 per cent. It was the closest popular vote in 72 years. However, because Kennedy won most of the larger states in the north-eastern United States, he received 303 votes in the Electoral College to Nixon’s 219.

IV

John F. Kennedy as President of the United States

Kennedy was inaugurated on January 20, 1961. In his inaugural address he emphasized America’s revolutionary heritage. “The same... beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe,” Kennedy said.

“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—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.”

Kennedy called for “a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved”. He recognized the difficulties of this goal. “All this will not be finished in the first 100 days,” he said. “Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”

Kennedy challenged Americans to assume the burden of “defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger”. The words of his address were: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

A

Kennedy’s Cabinet

Kennedy sought with considerable success to attract brilliant young people to government service. His hope was to bring new ideas and new methods into the executive branch. As a result, many of his advisers were teachers and scholars. Among them were McGeorge Bundy and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Kennedy’s Cabinet appointments included Dean Rusk, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, as secretary of state, and Robert S. McNamara, president of Ford Motor Company, as secretary of defense. Neither had been active in politics, and McNamara was a Republican. Other appointments were C. Douglas Dillon, who had been under-secretary of state in the Eisenhower administration, as secretary of the treasury, and Kennedy’s own brother, Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney-general.

Kennedy’s most influential adviser was Theodore C. Sorensen, a member of Kennedy’s staff since his days in the Senate. Sorensen wrote many of Kennedy’s speeches and exerted a strong influence on Kennedy’s political development.

B

New Frontier Programme

Kennedy’s first year in office brought him considerable success in enacting new legislation. Congress passed a major housing bill, a law increasing the minimum wage, and a bill granting federal aid to economically depressed areas of the United States. The most original piece of legislation Kennedy put through Congress was the bill creating the Peace Corps, an agency that trained American volunteers to perform social and humanitarian service overseas. The programme’s goal was to promote world peace and friendship with developing nations. The idea of American volunteers helping people in foreign lands touched the idealism of many young Americans of the baby-boom generation. Within two years, Peace Corps volunteers were working in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, living with the people and working on education, public health, and agricultural projects.

However, after his initial success with Congress, Kennedy found it increasingly difficult to get his programmes enacted into law. Although the Democrats held a majority in both houses, Southern Democrats joined with conservative Republicans to stop legislation they disliked. The Medicare bill, a bill to make medical care for the elderly a national benefit, was defeated. A civil rights bill and a bill to cut taxes were debated, and compromises were agreed to, but even the compromises were delayed. A bill to create a Cabinet-level Department of Urban Affairs was soundly defeated, partly because Kennedy wanted the black economist Robert C. Weaver to be the new secretary. Southern Congressmen united with representatives from predominantly rural areas to defeat the bill.

Kennedy did win approval of a bill to lower tariffs and thus allow more competitive American trade abroad. Congress also authorized the purchase of US$100 million in United Nations bonds, and the money enabled the international organization to survive a financial crisis. Further, Congress appropriated more than US$1 billion to finance sending a man to the Moon by 1970.

C

US Civil Rights Movement

The major American legal and moral conflict during Kennedy’s three years in office was in the area of civil rights. The civil rights movement against discrimination had become widespread and well organized. Although Kennedy faced opposition in Congress in formulating new civil rights legislation, he attempted to aid the black cause by enforcing existing laws. Kennedy particularly wanted to end discrimination in federally financed projects or in companies that were doing business with the government.

In September 1962 Governor Ross R. Barnett of Mississippi ignored a court order and prevented James H. Meredith, a black man, from enrolling at the state university. On the night of September 30, even as the president went on national television to appeal to the people of Mississippi to obey the law, rioting began on the campus. After 15 hours of rioting and two deaths, Kennedy sent in troops to restore order. Meredith was admitted to the university, and troops and federal marshals remained on the campus to ensure his safety.

In June 1963, when Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama prevented two blacks from enrolling at the University of Alabama, Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard to enforce the law. The students were enrolled at the university. Three months later, Kennedy again used the National Guard to prevent Wallace from interfering with integration in the schools of Birmingham, Tuskegee, and Mobile.

Kennedy also asked Congress to pass a civil rights bill that would guarantee blacks the right to vote, to attend school, to have equal access to jobs, and to have access to public accommodation. Kennedy told the American people: “Now the time has come for this nation to fulfill its promises... to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made in this century to the proposition that race has no place in American life or law.”

Public opinion polls showed that Kennedy was losing popularity because of his advocacy of civil rights. Privately, he began to assume that the South would oppose him at the next election, but he continued to speak out against segregation. To a group of students in Nashville, Tennessee, he said: “No one can deny the complexity of the problem involved in assuring all of our citizens their full rights as Americans. But no one can gainsay the fact that the determination to secure those rights is in the highest tradition of American freedom.”