Most historians tend to rank John Kennedy in sort of the middle categories, in terms of how presidents fare. But, it’s interesting. Public opinion polls, to this day, of Americans show he remains one of the most popular and that many Americans consider him one of the best presidents. Even though John Kennedy served just a little more than a thousand days in office, less than three years and had, as you point out, some serious mistakes early on.
John Kennedy, before he became president, was a young man in a hurry. He had a lot of money. He had a very powerful father who financed his campaign. And he found the key to success early in politics: the use of television, which he used very effectively.
In your reporting what did you learn about John Kennedy that you didn’t know from years of being exposed to this?
You could see, through the reading I did, and just watching numerous films that we have of him and looking at his decisions, how he grew in office. Kennedy came in a little unsure how to deal with the great threat of the time, which was the Cold War, the Soviet Union. And he was determined to see if he could do something about Fidel Castro in Cuba.
That proved to be a failure. The counterpoint to that comes two years into his presidency, a little more than that, by his very expert handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis and being able to find a way to being the United States and the Soviet Union a step back from nuclear war…which was a real possibility at that time when the Russians had put missiles into Cuba...a great threat to the United States.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25