John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29,
1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK or
by his nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the
35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his
assassination in November 1963. Kennedy served at the height of the
Cold War, and the majority of his work as president concerned
relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A Democrat, Kennedy
represented Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives and
Senate prior to becoming president.
Kennedy was born into a wealthy
political family in Brookline, Massachusetts. He graduated from
Harvard University in 1940, before joining the U.S. Naval Reserve the
following year. During World War II, he commanded a series of PT
boats in the Pacific theater and earned the Navy and Marine Corps
Medal for his service. After the war, Kennedy represented the
Massachusetts's 11th congressional district in the U.S. House of
Representatives from 1947 to 1953. He was subsequently elected to the
U.S. Senate and served as the junior Senator from Massachusetts from
1953 to 1960. While in the Senate, Kennedy published his book,
Profiles in Courage, which won a Pulitzer Prize. In the 1960
presidential election, he narrowly defeated Republican opponent
Richard Nixon, who was the incumbent vice president.
Kennedy's administration included high
tensions with communist states in the Cold War. As a result, he
increased the number of American military advisers in South Vietnam.
In April 1961, he authorized an attempt to overthrow the Cuban
government of Fidel Castro in the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Kennedy
authorized the Cuban Project in November 1961. He rejected Operation
Northwoods (plans for false flag attacks to gain approval for a war
against Cuba) in March 1962. However, his administration continued to
plan for an invasion of Cuba in the summer of 1962. The following
October, U.S. spy planes discovered Soviet missile bases had been
deployed in Cuba; the resulting period of tensions, termed the Cuban
Missile Crisis, nearly resulted in the breakout of a global
thermonuclear conflict. The Strategic Hamlet Program began in Vietnam
during his presidency. Domestically, Kennedy presided over the
establishment of the Peace Corps and the continuation of the Apollo
space program. He also supported the civil rights movement, but was
only somewhat successful in passing his New Frontier domestic
policies.
On November 22, 1963, he was
assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson
assumed the presidency upon Kennedy's death. Marxist and former U.S.
Marine Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the state crime, but he was
shot and killed by Jack Ruby two days later. The FBI and the Warren
Commission both concluded Oswald had acted alone in the
assassination, but various groups contested the Warren Report and
believed that Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy. After Kennedy's
death, Congress enacted many of his proposals, including the Civil
Rights Act and the Revenue Act of 1964. Kennedy ranks highly in polls
of U.S. presidents with historians and the general public. His
personal life has also been the focus of considerable sustained
interest, following public revelations in the 1970s of his chronic
health ailments and extramarital affairs.
Early life and education
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May
29, 1917, at 83 Beals Street in the Boston suburb of Brookline,
Massachusetts, to Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., a businessman and
politician, and Rose Kennedy (née Fitzgerald), a philanthropist and
socialite. His paternal grandfather, P. J. Kennedy, served as a
Massachusetts state legislator. Kennedy's maternal grandfather and
namesake, John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, served as
a U.S. Congressman and was elected to two terms as Mayor of Boston.
All four of his grandparents were children of Irish immigrants.
Kennedy had an elder brother, Joseph Jr., and seven younger siblings:
Rosemary, Kathleen ("Kick"), Eunice, Patricia,
Robert ("Bobby"), Jean, and Edward ("Ted").
Kennedy lived in Brookline for the
first ten years of his life and attended the local St. Aidan's
Church, where he was baptized on June 19, 1917. He was educated at
the Edward Devotion School in Brookline, the Noble and Greenough
Lower School in Dedham, Massachusetts, and the Dexter School (also in
Brookline) through the 4th grade. JFK's earliest memories involved
accompanying his grandfather Fitzgerald on walking tours of historic
sites in the Boston area and discussions at the family dinner table
about politics, sparking his interest in history and public service.
His father's business had kept him away from the family for long
stretches of time, and his ventures were concentrated on Wall Street
and Hollywood. In September 1927, the family moved from Boston by
"private railway car" to the Riverdale neighborhood
of New York City. The family spent summers and early autumns at
their home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, a village on Cape Cod,
where they enjoyed swimming, sailing, and touch football. Christmas
and Easter holidays were at their winter retreat in Palm Beach,
Florida. Several years later, his brother Robert told Look magazine
that his father had left Boston because of signs that read: "No
Irish Need Apply." Young John attended the Riverdale
Country School−a private school for boys−from 5th to 7th grade,
and was a member of Boy Scout Troop 2 in Bronxville, New York. In
September 1930, Kennedy, then 13 years old, attended the Canterbury
School in New Milford, Connecticut, for 8th grade. In April 1931, he
had an appendectomy, after which he withdrew from Canterbury and
recuperated at home.
In September 1931, Kennedy started
attending Choate, a prestigious boarding school in Wallingford,
Connecticut, for 9th through 12th grade. His older brother Joe Jr.
had already been at Choate for two years and was a football player
and leading student. He spent his first years at Choate in his older
brother's shadow and compensated with rebellious behavior that
attracted a coterie. They carried out their most notorious stunt by
exploding a toilet seat with a powerful firecracker. In the ensuing
chapel assembly, the strict headmaster, George St. John, brandished
the toilet seat and spoke of certain "muckers" who
would "spit in our sea". The defiant Kennedy took
the cue and named his group "The Muckers Club", which
included roommate and lifelong friend Kirk LeMoyne "Lem"
Billings.
During his years at Choate, Kennedy was
beset by health problems that culminated with his emergency
hospitalization in 1934 at Yale New Haven Hospital, where doctors
suspected leukemia. In June 1934, he was admitted to the Mayo Clinic
in Rochester, Minnesota; the ultimate diagnosis there was colitis.
Kennedy graduated from Choate in June of the following year,
finishing 64th in a class of 112 students. He had been the business
manager of the school yearbook and was voted the "most likely
to succeed".
In September 1935, Kennedy made his
first trip abroad when he traveled to London with his parents and his
sister Kathleen. He intended to study under Harold Laski at the
London School of Economics (LSE), as his older brother had done.
Ill-health forced his return to the United States in October of that
year, when he enrolled late and attended Princeton University but had
to leave after two months due to a gastrointestinal illness. He was
then hospitalized for observation at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in
Boston. He convalesced further at the family winter home in Palm
Beach, then spent the spring of 1936 working as a ranch hand on the
40,000-acre (16,000-hectare) Jay Six cattle ranch outside Benson,
Arizona. It is reported that ranchman Jack Speiden worked both
brothers "very hard".
In September 1936, Kennedy enrolled at
Harvard College, and his application essay stated: "The
reasons that I have for wishing to go to Harvard are several. I feel
that Harvard can give me a better background and a better liberal
education than any other university. I have always wanted to go
there, as I have felt that it is not just another college, but is a
university with something definite to offer. Then too, I would like
to go to the same college as my father. To be a 'Harvard man' is an
enviable distinction, and one that I sincerely hope I shall attain."
He produced that year's annual "Freshman Smoker",
called by a reviewer "an
elaborate entertainment, which included in its cast outstanding
personalities of the radio, screen and sports world".
He tried out for the football, golf,
and swimming teams and earned a spot on the varsity swimming team.
Kennedy also sailed in the Star class and won the 1936 Nantucket
Sound Star Championship. In July 1937, Kennedy sailed to
France—taking his convertible—and spent ten weeks driving through
Europe with Billings. In June 1938, Kennedy sailed overseas with his
father and older brother to work at the American embassy in London,
where his father was President Franklin D. Roosevelt's U.S.
Ambassador to the Court of St. James's.
In 1939, Kennedy toured Europe, the
Soviet Union, the Balkans, and the Middle East in preparation for his
Harvard senior honors thesis. He then went to Czechoslovakia and
Germany before returning to London on September 1, 1939, the day that
Germany invaded Poland to mark the beginning of World War II. Two
days later, the family was in the House of Commons for speeches
endorsing the United Kingdom's declaration of war on Germany. Kennedy
was sent as his father's representative to help with arrangements for
American survivors of the SS Athenia before flying back to the U.S.
from Foynes, Ireland, on his first transatlantic flight.
When Kennedy was an upperclassman at
Harvard, he began to take his studies more seriously and developed an
interest in political philosophy. He made the Dean's List in his
junior year. In 1940 Kennedy completed his thesis, "Appeasement
in Munich", about British negotiations during the Munich
Agreement. The thesis eventually became a bestseller under the title
Why England Slept. In addition to addressing Britain's unwillingness
to strengthen its military in the lead-up to World War II, the book
also called for an Anglo-American alliance against the rising
totalitarian powers. Kennedy became increasingly supportive of U.S.
intervention in World War II, and his father's isolationist beliefs
resulted in the latter's dismissal as ambassador to the United
Kingdom. This created a split between the Kennedy and Roosevelt
families.
In 1940, Kennedy graduated cum laude
from Harvard with a Bachelor of Arts in government, concentrating on
international affairs. That fall, he enrolled at the Stanford
Graduate School of Business and audited classes there. In early 1941,
Kennedy left and helped his father write a memoir of his time as an
American ambassador. He then traveled throughout South America; his
itinerary included Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.
U.S. Navy Reserve (1941–1945)
In 1940, Kennedy attempted to enter the
army's Officer Candidate School. Despite months of training, he was
medically disqualified due to his chronic lower back problems. On
September 24, 1941, Kennedy, with the help of then director of the
Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and former naval attaché to
Joseph Kennedy Alan Kirk, joined the United States Naval Reserve. He
was commissioned an ensign on October 26, 1941, and joined the staff
of the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, D.C.
In January 1942, Kennedy was assigned
to the ONI field office at Headquarters, Sixth Naval District, in
Charleston, South Carolina. He attended the Naval Reserve Officer
Training School at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, from
July 27 to September 27 and then voluntarily entered the Motor
Torpedo Boat Squadrons Training Center in Melville, Rhode Island. On
October 10, he was promoted to lieutenant junior grade. In early
November, Kennedy was still mourning the death of his close,
childhood friend, Marine Corps Second Lieutenant George Houk Mead
Jr., who had been killed in action at Guadalcanal that August and
awarded the Navy Cross for his bravery. Accompanied by a female
acquaintance from a wealthy Newport family, the couple had stopped in
Middletown, Rhode Island at the cemetery where the decorated, naval
spy, Commander Hugo W. Koehler, USN, had been buried the previous
year. Ambling around the plots near the tiny St. Columba's chapel,
Kennedy paused over Koehler's white granite cross grave marker and
pondered his own mortality, hoping out loud that when his time came,
he would not have to die without religion. "But these things
can't be faked," he added. "There's no bluffing."
Two decades later, Kennedy and Koehler's stepson, U.S. Senator
Claiborne Pell had become good friends and political allies, although
they had been acquaintances since the mid-1930s during their "salad
days" on the same Newport debutante party "circuit"
and when Pell had dated Kathleen ("Kick") Kennedy.
Kennedy completed his training on December 2 and was assigned to
Motor Torpedo Squadron FOUR.
His first command was PT-101 from
December 7, 1942, until February 23, 1943: It was a patrol torpedo
(PT) boat used for training while Kennedy was an instructor at
Melville. He then led three Huckins PT boats—PT-98, PT-99, and
PT-101, which were being relocated from MTBRON 4 in Melville, Rhode
Island, back to Jacksonville, Florida, and the new MTBRON 14 (formed
February 17, 1943). During the trip south, he was hospitalized
briefly in Jacksonville after diving into the cold water to unfoul a
propeller. Thereafter, Kennedy was assigned duty in Panama and later
in the Pacific theater, where he eventually commanded two more PT
boats.
Commanding PT-109
In April 1943, Kennedy was assigned to
Motor Torpedo Squadron TWO, and on April 24 he took command of
PT-109, which was based at the time on Tulagi Island in the Solomons.
On the night of August 1–2, in support of the New Georgia
campaign, PT-109 was on its 31st mission with fourteen other PTs
ordered to block or repel four Japanese destroyers and floatplanes
carrying food, supplies, and 900 Japanese soldiers to the Vila
Plantation garrison on the southern tip of the Solomon's Kolombangara
Island. Intelligence had been sent to Kennedy's Commander Thomas G.
Warfield expecting the arrival of the large Japanese naval force that
would pass on the evening of August 1. Of the 24 torpedoes fired that
night by eight of the American PT's, not one hit the Japanese convoy.
On that dark and moonless night, Kennedy spotted a Japanese
destroyer heading north on its return from the base of Kolombangara
around 2:00 a.m., and attempted to turn to attack, when PT-109 was
rammed suddenly at an angle and cut in half by the destroyer
Amagiri(captain:Kohei
Hanami ), killing
two PT-109 crew members.
Kennedy gathered around the wreckage
his surviving ten crew members to vote on whether to "fight
or surrender". Kennedy stated: "There's nothing in
the book about a situation like this. A lot of you men have families
and some of you have children. What do you want to do? I have nothing
to lose." Shunning surrender, around 2:00 p.m. on August 2,
the men swam towards Plum Pudding island 3.5 miles (5.6 km) southwest
of the remains of PT-109. Despite re-injuring his back in the
collision, Kennedy towed a badly burned crewman through the water to
the island with a life jacket strap clenched between his teeth.
Kennedy made an additional two-mile swim the night of August 2, 1943,
to Ferguson Passage to attempt to hail a passing American PT boat to
expedite his crew's rescue and attempted to make the trip on a
subsequent night, in a damaged canoe found on Naru Island where he
had swum with Ensign George Ross to look for food.
On August 4, 1943, he and Lenny Thom
assisted his injured and hungry crew on a demanding swim 3.75 miles
(6.04 km) southeast to Olasana Island, which was visible to the crew
from their desolate home on Plum Pudding Island. They swam against a
strong current, and once again Kennedy towed the badly burned motor
machinist "Pappy" MacMahon by his life vest. The
somewhat larger Olasana Island had ripe coconut trees, but still no
fresh water. On the following day, August 5, Kennedy and Ensign
George Ross made the one hour swim to Naru Island, an additional
distance of about .5 miles (0.80 km) southwest, in search of help and
food. Kennedy and Ross found a small canoe, packages of crackers,
candy and a fifty-gallon drum of drinkable water left by the
Japanese, which Kennedy paddled another half mile back to Olasana in
the acquired canoe to provide his hungry crew. Lieutenant "Bud"
Liebenow, a friend and former tentmate of Kennedy's, rescued Kennedy
and his crew on Olasana Island on August 8, 1943 aboard his boat,
PT-157, with the help of coast watcher Lieutenant Reginald Evans and
several native coast watchers, particularly Biuku Gasa and Eroni
Kumana.
Commanding PT-59
Kennedy took only a month to recover
and returned to duty, commanding the PT-59, first removing the
torpedo tubes and depth charges and refitting her in one month into a
heavily armed gunboat mounting two automatic 40mm guns and ten .50
caliber Browning machine guns. The plan was to attach one gunboat to
each PT boat section to add gun range and power against barges and
shore batteries which the 59 encountered on several occasions in
mid-October through mid-November. On October 8, 1943, Kennedy was
promoted to full lieutenant. On November 2, Kennedy's PT-59 took
part with two other PTs in the successful rescue of 40–50 marines.
The 59 acted as a shield from shore fire and protected them as they
escaped on two rescue landing craft at the base of the Warrior River
at Choiseul Island, taking ten marines aboard and delivering them to
safety. Under doctor's orders, Kennedy was relieved of his command
of PT-59 on November 18, and sent to the hospital on Tulagi. From
there he returned to the United States in early January 1944. After
receiving treatment for his back injury, he was released from active
duty in late 1944.
Kennedy was hospitalized at the Chelsea
Naval Hospital in Chelsea, Massachusetts from May to December 1944.
On June 12, he was presented the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for his
heroic actions on August 1–2, 1943, and the Purple Heart Medal for
his back injury while on PT-109. Beginning in January 1945, Kennedy
spent three more months recovering from his back injury at Castle Hot
Springs, a resort and temporary military hospital in Arizona. After
the war, Kennedy felt that the medal he had received for heroism was
not a combat award and asked that he be reconsidered for the Silver
Star Medal for which he had been recommended initially. Kennedy's
father also requested that his son receive the Silver Star, which is
awarded for gallantry in action.
On August 12, 1944, Kennedy's older
brother, Joe Jr., a navy pilot, was killed while volunteering for a
special and hazardous air mission. His explosive-laden plane blew up
when the plane's bombs detonated prematurely while the aircraft was
flying over the English Channel.
On March 1, 1945, Kennedy retired from
the Navy Reserve on physical disability and was honorably discharged
with the full rank of lieutenant. When later asked how he became a
war hero, Kennedy joked: "It was easy. They cut my PT boat in
half.”
In 1950, the Department of the Navy
offered Kennedy a Bronze Star Medal in recognition of his meritorious
service, which he declined. Kennedy's two original medals are
currently on display at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and
Museum.
Military awards
Kennedy's military decorations and
awards include the Navy and Marine Corps Medal; Purple Heart Medal;
American Defense Service Medal; American Campaign Medal;
Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with three 3⁄16" bronze
stars; and the World War II Victory Medal.
Navy and Marine Corps Medal citation
For extremely heroic conduct as
Commanding Officer of Motor Torpedo Boat 109 following the collision
and sinking of that vessel in the Pacific War area on August 1–2,
1943. Unmindful of personal danger, Lieutenant (then Lieutenant,
Junior Grade) Kennedy unhesitatingly braved the difficulties and
hazards of darkness to direct rescue operations, swimming many hours
to secure aid and food after he had succeeded in getting his crew
ashore. His outstanding courage, endurance and leadership contributed
to the saving of several lives and were in keeping with the highest
traditions of the United States Naval Service.— James
Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy
Journalism
In April 1945, Kennedy's father, who
was a friend of William Randolph Hearst, arranged a position for his
son as a special correspondent for Hearst Newspapers; the assignment
kept Kennedy's name in the public eye and "expose[d] him to
journalism as a possible career". He worked as a
correspondent that May, covering the Potsdam Conference and other
events.
Congressional career (1947–1960)
JFK's elder brother Joe had been the
family's political standard-bearer and had been tapped by their
father to seek the Presidency. Joe's death during the war in 1944
changed that course and the assignment fell to JFK as the second
eldest of the Kennedy siblings.
House of Representatives (1947–1953)
At the urging of Kennedy's father, U.S.
Representative James Michael Curley vacated his seat in the strongly
Democratic 11th congressional district of Massachusetts to become
mayor of Boston in 1946. Kennedy established his residency at an
apartment building on 122 Bowdoin Street across from the
Massachusetts State House. With his father financing and running his
campaign under the slogan "THE NEW GENERATION OFFERS A
LEADER", Kennedy won the Democratic primary with 42 percent
of the vote, defeating ten other candidates. His father joked after
the campaign, "With the money I spent, I could have elected
my chauffeur." Campaigning around Boston, Kennedy called
for better housing for veterans, better health care for all, and
support for organized labor's campaign for reasonable work hours, a
healthy workplace, and the right to organize, bargain, and strike. In
addition, he campaigned for peace through the United Nations and
strong opposition to the Soviet Union. Though Republicans took
control of the House in the 1946 elections, Kennedy defeated his
Republican opponent in the general election, taking 73 percent of the
vote. Along with Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy, Kennedy was one
of several World War II veterans elected to Congress that year.
He served in the House for six years,
joining the influential Education and Labor Committee and the
Veterans' Affairs Committee. He concentrated his attention on
international affairs, supporting the Truman Doctrine as the
appropriate response to the emerging Cold War. He also supported
public housing and opposed the Labor Management Relations Act of
1947, which restricted the power of labor unions. Though not as vocal
an anti-communist as McCarthy, Kennedy supported the Immigration and
Nationality Act of 1952, which required Communists to register with
the government, and he deplored the "loss of China".
Having served as a Boy Scout during his
childhood, Kennedy was active in the Boston Council from 1946 to
1955: as District Vice Chairman, member of the Executive Board,
Vice-President, as well as a National Council Representative. Almost
every weekend that Congress was in session, Kennedy would fly back to
Massachusetts to give speeches to veteran, fraternal, and civic
groups, while maintaining an index card file on individuals who might
be helpful for a future campaign for state-wide office. JFK set a
goal of speaking in every city and town in Massachusetts prior to
1952.
Senate (1953–1960)
As early as 1949, Kennedy began
preparing to run for the Senate in 1952 against Republican three-term
incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. with the campaign slogan "KENNEDY
WILL DO MORE FOR MASSACHUSETTS". Joseph Kennedy again
financed his son's candidacy, while John Kennedy's younger brother
Robert Kennedy emerged as an important member of the campaign as
manager. The campaign hosted a series of "teas"
(sponsored by Kennedy's mother and sisters) at hotels and parlors
across Massachusetts to reach out to women voters. In the
presidential election, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower carried
Massachusetts by a margin of 208,000 votes, but Kennedy defeated
Lodge by 70,000 votes for the Senate seat. The following year, he
married Jacqueline Bouvier.
Results of the 1958 U.S. Senate
election in Massachusetts. Kennedy's margin of victory of 874,608
votes was the largest in Massachusetts political history.
Kennedy underwent several spinal
operations over the next two years. Often absent from the Senate, he
was at times critically ill and received Catholic last rites. During
his convalescence in 1956, he published Profiles in Courage, a book
about U.S. senators who risked their careers for their personal
beliefs, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1957.
Rumors that this work was co-written by his close adviser and
speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, were confirmed in Sorensen's 2008
autobiography.
At the start of his first term, Kennedy
focused on Massachusetts-specific issues by sponsoring bills to help
the fishing, textile manufacturing, and watchmaking industries. In
1954, Senator Kennedy voted in favor of the Saint Lawrence Seaway
which would connect the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, despite
opposition from Massachusetts politicians who argued that the project
would cripple New England's shipping industry, including the Port of
Boston. Three years later, Kennedy chaired a special committee to
select the five greatest U.S. Senators in history so their portraits
could decorate the Senate Reception Room. That same year, Kennedy
joined the Senate Labor Rackets Committee with his brother Robert
(who was chief counsel) to investigate crime infiltration of labor
unions. In 1958, Kennedy introduced a bill (S. 3974) which became
the first major labor relations bill to pass either house since the
Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. The bill dealt largely with the control of
union abuses exposed by the McClellan committee but did not
incorporate tough Taft-Hartley amendments requested by President
Eisenhower. It survived Senate floor attempts to include Taft-Hartley
amendments and gained passage but was rejected by the House.
At the 1956 Democratic National
Convention, Kennedy gave the nominating speech for the party's
presidential nominee, Adlai Stevenson II. Stevenson let the
convention select the Vice Presidential nominee. Kennedy finished
second in the balloting, losing to Senator Estes Kefauver of
Tennessee but receiving national exposure as a result.
One of the matters demanding Kennedy's
attention in the Senate was President Eisenhower's bill for the Civil
Rights Act of 1957. Kennedy cast a procedural vote against it,
considered by some as an appeasement of Southern Democratic opponents
of the bill. Kennedy did vote for Title III of the act, which would
have given the Attorney General powers to enjoin, but Majority Leader
Lyndon B. Johnson agreed to let the provision die as a compromise
measure. Kennedy also voted for Title IV, termed the "Jury
Trial Amendment". Many civil rights advocates at the time
criticized that vote as one which would weaken the act. A final
compromise bill, which Kennedy supported, was passed in September
1957. He proposed July 2, 1957 that the U.S. support Algeria's
effort to gain independence from France. The following year, Kennedy
authored A Nation of Immigrants (later published in 1964), which
analyzed the importance of immigration in the country's history as
well as proposals to re-evaluate immigration law.
In 1958, Kennedy was re-elected to a
second term in the Senate, defeating Republican opponent, Boston
lawyer Vincent J. Celeste, by a margin of 874,608 votes, the largest
margin in the history of Massachusetts politics. It was during his
re-election campaign that Kennedy's press secretary at the time,
Robert E. Thompson, put together a film entitled The U.S. Senator
John F. Kennedy Story, which exhibited a day in the life of the
Senator and showcased his family life as well as the inner workings
of his office to solve Massachusetts-related issues. It was the most
comprehensive film produced about Kennedy up to that time. In the
aftermath of his re-election, Kennedy began preparing to run for
president by traveling throughout the U.S. with the aim of building
his candidacy for 1960.
When it came to conservation, Kennedy,
a Massachusetts Audubon Society supporter, wanted to make sure that
the shorelines of Cape Cod remained unsullied by future
industrialization. On September 3, 1959, Kennedy cosponsored the Cape
Cod National Seashore bill with his Republican colleague Senator
Leverett Saltonstall.
Kennedy's father was a strong supporter
and friend of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Additionally, Bobby Kennedy
worked for McCarthy's subcommittee, and McCarthy dated Kennedy's
sister Patricia. Kennedy told historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.,
"Hell, half my voters [particularly Catholics] in
Massachusetts look on McCarthy as a hero." In 1954, the
Senate voted to censure McCarthy, and Kennedy drafted a speech
supporting the censure. However, it was not delivered because Kennedy
was hospitalized at the time. The speech put Kennedy in the apparent
position of participating by "pairing" his vote
against that of another senator and opposing the censure. Although
Kennedy never indicated how he would have voted, the episode damaged
his support among members of the liberal community, including Eleanor
Roosevelt, in the 1956 and 1960 elections.
1960 presidential election
On December 17, 1959, a letter from
Kennedy's staff that was to be sent to "active and
influential Democrats" was leaked stating that he would
announce his presidential campaign on January 2, 1960. On January 2,
1960, Kennedy announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential
nomination. Though some questioned Kennedy's age and experience, his
charisma and eloquence earned him numerous supporters. Many Americans
held anti-Catholic attitudes, but Kennedy's vocal support of the
separation of church and state helped defuse the situation. His
religion also helped him win a devoted following among many Catholic
voters. Kennedy faced several potential challengers for the
Democratic nomination, including Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B.
Johnson, Adlai Stevenson II, and Senator Hubert Humphrey.
Kennedy's presidential campaign was a
family affair, funded by his father and with his younger brother
Robert, acting as his campaign manager. John preferred Ivy League
policy advisors, but unlike his father he enjoyed the give and take
of Massachusetts politics and built a largely Irish team of
campaigners, headed by Larry O'Brien and Kenneth O'Donnell. Kennedy
traveled extensively to build his support among Democratic elites and
voters. At the time, party officials controlled most of the
delegates, but several states also held primaries, and Kennedy sought
to win several primaries to boost his chances of winning the
nomination. In his first major test, Kennedy won the Wisconsin
primary, effectively ending Humphrey's hopes of winning the
presidency. Nonetheless, Kennedy and Humphrey faced each other in a
competitive West Virginia primary in which Kennedy could not benefit
from a Catholic bloc, as he had in Wisconsin. Kennedy won the West
Virginia primary, impressing many in the party, but at the start of
the 1960 Democratic National Convention, it was unclear as to whether
he would win the nomination.
When Kennedy entered the convention, he
had the most delegates, but not enough to ensure that he would win
the nomination. Stevenson—the 1952 and 1956 presidential
nominee—remained very popular in the party, while Johnson also
hoped to win the nomination with the support from party leaders.
Kennedy's candidacy also faced opposition from former president Harry
S. Truman, who was concerned about Kennedy's lack of experience.
Kennedy knew that a second ballot could give the nomination to
Johnson or someone else, and his well-organized campaign was able to
earn the support of just enough delegates to win the presidential
nomination on the first ballot.
Kennedy ignored the opposition of his
brother, who wanted him to choose labor leader Walter Reuther, and
other liberal supporters when he chose Johnson as his vice
presidential nominee. He believed that the Texas Senator could help
him win support from the South. The choice infuriated many in labor.
AFL-CIO President George Meany called Johnson "the arch foe
of labor," while Illinois AFL-CIO President Reuben
Soderstrom asserted Kennedy had "made chumps out of leaders
of the American labor movement." In accepting the
presidential nomination, Kennedy gave his well-known "New
Frontier" speech, saying, "For the problems are not all
solved and the battles are not all won—and we stand today on the
edge of a New Frontier. ... But the New Frontier of which I speak 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."
At the start of the fall general
election campaign, Republican nominee and incumbent vice president
Richard Nixon held a six-point lead in the polls. Major issues
included how to get the economy moving again, Kennedy's Roman
Catholicism, the Cuban Revolution, and whether the space and missile
programs of the Soviet Union had surpassed those of the U.S. To
address fears that his being Catholic would impact his
decision-making, he famously told the Greater Houston Ministerial
Association on September 12, 1960: "I am not the Catholic
candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party candidate for
president who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my
Church on public matters—and the Church does not speak for me."
Kennedy questioned rhetorically whether one-quarter of Americans
were relegated to second-class citizenship just because they were
Catholic, and once stated that "[n]o one asked me my religion
[serving the Navy] in the South Pacific".
1960 electoral vote results
Between September and October, Kennedy
squared off against Nixon in the first televised presidential debates
in U.S. history. During these programs, Nixon had an injured leg,
"five o'clock shadow", and was perspiring, making
him look tense and uncomfortable. Conversely, Kennedy wore makeup and
appeared relaxed, which helped the large television audience to view
him as the winner. On average radio listeners thought that Nixon had
won or that the debates were a draw. The debates are now considered
a milestone in American political history—the point at which the
medium of television began to play a dominant role in politics.
Kennedy's campaign gained momentum
after the first debate, and he pulled slightly ahead of Nixon in most
polls. On Election Day, Kennedy defeated Nixon in one of the closest
presidential elections of the 20th century. In the national popular
vote, by most accounts, Kennedy led Nixon by just two-tenths of one
percent (49.7% to 49.5%), while in the Electoral College, he won 303
votes to Nixon's 219 (269 were needed to win). Fourteen electors
from Mississippi and Alabama refused to support Kennedy because of
his support for the civil rights movement; they voted for Senator
Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, as did an elector from Oklahoma. Kennedy
became the youngest person (43) ever elected to the presidency,
though Theodore Roosevelt was a year younger at 42 when he
automatically assumed the office after William McKinley's
assassination in 1901.
Presidency (1961–1963)
John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the
35th president at noon on January 20, 1961. In his inaugural address,
he spoke of the need for all Americans to be active citizens,
famously saying, "Ask not what your country can do for you.
Ask what you can do for your country." He asked the nations
of the world to join together to fight what he called the "common
enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself".
He added:
"All this will not be finished
in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first
one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even
perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin." In
closing, he expanded on his desire for greater internationalism:
"Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the
world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and
sacrifice which we ask of you."
The address reflected Kennedy's
confidence that his administration would chart a historically
significant course in both domestic policy and foreign affairs. The
contrast between this optimistic vision and the pressures of managing
daily political realities at home and abroad would be one of the main
tensions running through the early years of his administration.
Kennedy brought to the White House a
contrast in organization compared to the decision-making structure of
former-General Eisenhower, and he wasted no time in scrapping
Eisenhower's methods. Kennedy preferred the organizational structure
of a wheel with all the spokes leading to the president. He was ready
and willing to make the increased number of quick decisions required
in such an environment. He selected a mixture of experienced and
inexperienced people to serve in his cabinet. "We can learn
our jobs together", he stated.
Much to the chagrin of his economic
advisors, who wanted him to reduce taxes, Kennedy quickly agreed to a
balanced budget pledge. This was needed in exchange for votes to
expand the membership of the House Rules Committee in order to give
the Democrats a majority in setting the legislative agenda. The
president focused on immediate and specific issues facing the
administration and quickly voiced his impatience with pondering of
deeper meanings. Deputy National Security Advisor Walt Whitman Rostow
once began a diatribe about the growth of communism, and Kennedy
abruptly cut him off, asking, "What do you want me to do
about that today?"
Kennedy approved Defense Secretary
Robert McNamara's controversial decision to award the contract for
the F-111 TFX (Tactical Fighter Experimental) fighter-bomber to
General Dynamics (the choice of the civilian Defense department) over
Boeing (the choice of the military). At the request of Senator Henry
Jackson, Senator John McClellan held 46 days of mostly closed-door
hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
investigating the TFX contract from February to November 1963.
During the summer of 1962, Kennedy had
a secret taping system set up in the White House, most likely to aid
his future memoir. It recorded many conversations with Kennedy and
his Cabinet members, including those in relation to the "Cuban
Missile Crisis".
Foreign policy
President Kennedy's foreign policy was
dominated by American confrontations with the Soviet Union,
manifested by proxy contests in the early stage of the Cold War. In
1961 he anxiously anticipated a summit with Soviet Premier Nikita
Khrushchev. He started off on the wrong foot by reacting aggressively
to a routine Khrushchev speech on Cold War confrontation in
early-1961. The speech was intended for domestic audiences in the
Soviet Union, but Kennedy interpreted it as a personal challenge. His
mistake helped raise tensions going into the Vienna summit of June
1961.
On the way to the summit, Kennedy
stopped in Paris to meet French President Charles de Gaulle, who
advised him to ignore Khrushchev's abrasive style. The French
president feared the United States' presumed influence in Europe.
Nevertheless, de Gaulle was quite impressed with the young president
and his family. Kennedy picked up on this in his speech in Paris,
saying that he would be remembered as "the
man who accompanied Jackie Kennedy to Paris".
On June 4, 1961, the president met with
Khrushchev in Vienna and left the meetings angry and disappointed
that he had allowed the premier to bully him, despite the warnings he
had received. Khrushchev, for his part, was impressed with the
president's intelligence, but thought him weak. Kennedy did succeed
in conveying the bottom line to Khrushchev on the most sensitive
issue before them, a proposed treaty between Moscow and East Berlin.
He made it clear that any treaty interfering with U.S. access rights
in West Berlin would be regarded as an act of war.
Shortly after the president returned
home, the U.S.S.R. announced its plan to sign a treaty with East
Berlin, abrogating any third-party occupation rights in either sector
of the city. Depressed and angry, Kennedy assumed that his only
option was to prepare the country for nuclear war, which he
personally thought had a one-in-five chance of occurring.
In the weeks immediately following the
Vienna summit, more than 20,000 people fled from East Berlin to the
western sector, reacting to statements from the U.S.S.R. Kennedy
began intensive meetings on the Berlin issue, where Dean Acheson took
the lead in recommending a military buildup alongside NATO allies.
In a July 1961 speech, Kennedy announced his decision to add $3.25
billion (equivalent to $27.81 billion in 2019) to the defense budget,
along with over 200,000 additional troops, stating that an attack on
West Berlin would be taken as an attack on the U.S. The speech
received an 85% approval rating.
A month later, both the Soviet Union
and East Berlin began blocking any further passage of East Berliners
into West Berlin and erected barbed wire fences across the city,
which were quickly upgraded to the Berlin Wall. Kennedy's initial
reaction was to ignore this, as long as free access from West to East
Berlin continued. This course was altered when West Berliners had
lost confidence in the defense of their position by the United
States. Kennedy sent Vice President Johnson, along with a host of
military personnel, in convoy through West Germany, including
Soviet-armed checkpoints, to demonstrate the continued commitment of
the U.S. to West Berlin.
Kennedy gave a speech at Saint Anselm
College on May 5, 1960, regarding America's conduct in the emerging
Cold War. The address detailed how the American foreign policy should
be conducted towards African nations, noting a hint of support for
modern African nationalism by saying, "For we, too, founded a
new nation on revolt from colonial rule."
Cuba and the Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Eisenhower administration had
created a plan to overthrow Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba. Led by the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with help from the U.S. military,
the plan was for an invasion of Cuba by a counter-revolutionary
insurgency composed of U.S.-trained, anti-Castro Cuban exiles led by
CIA paramilitary officers. The intention was to invade Cuba and
instigate an uprising among the Cuban people, hoping to remove Castro
from power. Kennedy approved the final invasion plan on April 4,
1961.
The Bay of Pigs Invasion began on April
17, 1961. Fifteen hundred U.S.-trained Cubans, dubbed Brigade 2506,
landed on the island. No U.S. air support was provided. CIA director
Allen Dulles later stated that they thought the president would
authorize any action that was needed for success once the troops were
on the ground.
By April 19, 1961, the Cuban government
had captured or killed the invading exiles, and Kennedy was forced to
negotiate for the release of the 1,189 survivors. Twenty months
later, Cuba released the captured exiles in exchange for $53 million
worth of food and medicine. The incident made Castro feel wary of
the U.S. and led him to believe that another invasion would take
place.
Biographer Richard Reeves said that
Kennedy focused primarily on the political repercussions of the plan
rather than military considerations. When it proved unsuccessful, he
was convinced that the plan was a setup to make him look bad. He
took responsibility for the failure, saying, "We got a big
kick in the leg and we deserved it. But maybe we'll learn something
from it." He appointed Robert Kennedy to help lead a
committee to examine the causes of the failure.
In late-1961, the White House formed
the Special Group (Augmented), headed by Robert Kennedy and including
Edward Lansdale, Secretary Robert McNamara, and others. The group's
objective—to overthrow Castro via espionage, sabotage, and other
covert tactics—was never pursued.
Cuban Missile Crisis
On October 14, 1962, CIA U-2 spy planes
took photographs of the Soviets' construction of intermediate-range
ballistic missile sites in Cuba. The photos were shown to Kennedy on
October 16; a consensus was reached that the missiles were offensive
in nature and thus posed an immediate nuclear threat.
Kennedy faced a dilemma: if the U.S.
attacked the sites, it might lead to nuclear war with the U.S.S.R.,
but if the U.S. did nothing, it would be faced with the increased
threat from close-range nuclear weapons. The U.S. would also appear
to the world as less committed to the defense of the hemisphere. On a
personal level, Kennedy needed to show resolve in reaction to
Khrushchev, especially after the Vienna summit.
More than a third of U.S. National
Security Council (NSC) members favored an unannounced air assault on
the missile sites, but for some of them this conjured up an image of
"Pearl Harbor in reverse". There was also some
concern from the international community (asked in confidence), that
the assault plan was an overreaction in light of the fact that
Eisenhower had placed PGM-19 Jupiter missiles in Italy and Turkey in
1958. It also could not be assured that the assault would be 100%
effective. In concurrence with a majority-vote of the NSC, Kennedy
decided on a naval quarantine. On October 22, he dispatched a message
to Khrushchev and announced the decision on TV.
The U.S. Navy would stop and inspect
all Soviet ships arriving off Cuba, beginning October 24. The
Organization of American States gave unanimous support to the removal
of the missiles. The president exchanged two sets of letters with
Khrushchev, to no avail. United Nations (UN) Secretary General U
Thant requested both parties to reverse their decisions and enter a
cooling-off period. Khrushchev agreed, but Kennedy did not.
One Soviet-flagged ship was stopped and
boarded. On October 28, Khrushchev agreed to dismantle the missile
sites, subject to UN inspections.[162] The U.S. publicly promised
never to invade Cuba and privately agreed to remove its Jupiter
missiles from Italy and Turkey, which were by then obsolete and had
been supplanted by submarines equipped with UGM-27 Polaris missiles.
This crisis brought the world closer to
nuclear war than at any point before or after. It is considered that
"the humanity" of both Khrushchev and Kennedy prevailed.
The crisis improved the image of American willpower and the
president's credibility. Kennedy's approval rating increased from 66%
to 77% immediately thereafter.
Latin America and communism
Believing that "those who make
peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution
inevitable," Kennedy sought to contain the perceived threat
of communism in Latin America by establishing the Alliance for
Progress, which sent aid to some countries and sought greater human
rights standards in the region. He worked closely with Puerto Rican
Governor Luis Muñoz MarÃn for the development of the Alliance of
Progress, and began working towards Puerto Rico's autonomy.
The Eisenhower administration, through
the CIA, had begun formulating plans to assassinate Castro in Cuba
and Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. When President Kennedy
took office, he privately instructed the CIA that any plan must
include plausible deniability by the U.S. His public position was in
opposition. In June 1961, the Dominican Republic's leader was
assassinated; in the days following, Undersecretary of State Chester
Bowles led a cautious reaction by the nation. Robert Kennedy, who saw
an opportunity for the U.S., called Bowles "a gutless bastard"
to his face.
Peace Corps
Establishment of the Peace Corps
In one of his first presidential acts,
Kennedy asked Congress to create the Peace Corps. His brother-in-law,
Sargent Shriver, was its first director. Through this program,
Americans volunteered to help developing nations in fields like
education, farming, health care, and construction. The organization
grew to 5,000 members by March 1963 and 10,000 the year after. Since
1961, over 200,000 Americans have joined the Peace Corps,
representing 139 different countries.
Southeast Asia
As a U.S. Senator in 1956, Kennedy
publicly advocated for greater U.S. involvement in Vietnam. When
briefing Kennedy, Eisenhower emphasized that the communist threat in
Southeast Asia required priority; Eisenhower considered Laos to be
"the cork in the bottle" regarding the regional
threat. In March 1961, Kennedy voiced a change in policy from
supporting a "free" Laos to a "neutral"
Laos, indicating privately that Vietnam, and not Laos, should be
deemed America's tripwire for communism's spread in the area. In
May, he dispatched Lyndon Johnson to meet with South Vietnamese
President Ngo Dinh Diem. Johnson assured Diem more aid to mold a
fighting force that could resist the communists. Kennedy announced a
change of policy from support to partnership with Diem to defeat of
communism in South Vietnam.
During his presidency, Kennedy
continued policies that provided political, economic, and military
support to the governments of South Korea and South Vietnam.
We have one-million Americans today
serving outside the United-States. There's no other country in
history that's carried this kind of a burden. Other countries have
had forces serving outside their own country, but for conquest. We
have two divisions in South-Korea, not to control South-Korea, but to
defend it. We have a lot of Americans in South Vietnam. Well, no
other country in the world has ever done that since the beginning of
the world; Greece, Rome, Napoleon, and all the rest, always had
conquest. We have a million men outside, and they try to defend these
countries.
In late 1961, the Viet Cong began
assuming a predominant presence, initially seizing the provincial
capital of Phuoc Vinh. Kennedy increased the number of military
advisers and special forces in the area, from 11,000 in 1962 to
16,000 by late 1963, but he was reluctant to order a full-scale
deployment of troops. A year and three months later on March 8,
1965, his successor, President Lyndon Johnson, committed the first
combat troops to Vietnam and greatly escalated U.S. involvement, with
forces reaching 184,000 that year and 536,000 in 1968.
In late 1961, President Kennedy sent
Roger Hilsman, then director of the State Department's Bureau of
Intelligence and Research, to assess the situation in Vietnam. There,
Hilsman met Sir Robert Grainger Ker Thompson, head of the British
Advisory Mission to South Vietnam, and the Strategic Hamlet Program
was formed. It was approved by Kennedy and South Vietnam President
Ngo Dinh Diem. It was implemented in early 1962 and involved some
forced relocation, village internment, and segregation of rural South
Vietnamese into new communities where the peasantry would be isolated
from Communist insurgents. It was hoped that these new communities
would provide security for the peasants and strengthen the tie
between them and the central government. By November 1963, the
program waned and officially ended in 1964.
In early 1962, Kennedy formally
authorized escalated involvement when he signed the National Security
Action Memorandum – "Subversive Insurgency (War of
Liberation)". "Operation Ranch Hand", a
large-scale aerial defoliation effort, began on the roadsides of
South Vietnam. Depending on which assessment Kennedy accepted
(Department of Defense or State), there had been zero or modest
progress in countering the increase in communist aggression in return
for an expanded U.S. involvement.
In April 1963, Kennedy assessed the
situation in Vietnam, saying, "We don't have a prayer of
staying in Vietnam. Those people hate us. They are going to throw our
asses out of there at any point. But I can't give up that territory
to the communists and get the American people to re-elect me."
On August 21, just as the new U.S.
Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. arrived, Diem and his brother Ngo
Dinh Nhu ordered South Vietnam forces, funded and trained by the CIA,
to quell Buddhist demonstrations. The crackdowns heightened
expectations of a coup d'état to remove Diem with (or perhaps by)
his brother, Nhu. Lodge was instructed to try getting Diem and Nhu
to step down and leave the country. Diem would not listen to Lodge.
Cable 243 (DEPTEL 243) followed, dated August 24, declaring that
Washington would no longer tolerate Nhu's actions, and Lodge was
ordered to pressure Diem to remove Nhu. Lodge concluded that the
only option was to get the South Vietnamese generals to overthrow
Diem and Nhu. At week's end, orders were sent to Saigon and
throughout Washington to "destroy all coup cables".
At the same time, the first formal anti-Vietnam war sentiment was
expressed by U.S. clergy from the Ministers' Vietnam Committee.
A White House meeting in September was
indicative of the different ongoing appraisals; the president was
given updated assessments after personal inspections on the ground by
the Departments of Defense (General Victor Krulak) and State (Joseph
Mendenhall). Krulak said that the military fight against the
communists was progressing and being won, while Mendenhall stated
that the country was civilly being lost to any U.S. influence.
Kennedy reacted, asking, "Did you two gentlemen visit the
same country?" The president was unaware that both men were
at such odds that they had not spoken to each other on the return
flight.
In October 1963, the president
appointed Defense Secretary McNamara and General Maxwell D. Taylor to
a Vietnamese mission in another effort to synchronize the information
and formulation of policy. The objective of the McNamara Taylor
mission "emphasized the importance of getting to the bottom
of the differences in reporting from U.S. representatives in
Vietnam". In meetings with McNamara, Taylor, and Lodge,
Diem again refused to agree to governing measures, helping to dispel
McNamara's previous optimism about Diem. Taylor and McNamara were
enlightened by Vietnam's vice president, Nguyen Ngoc Tho (choice of
many to succeed Diem), who in detailed terms obliterated Taylor's
information that the military was succeeding in the countryside. At
Kennedy's insistence, the mission report contained a recommended
schedule for troop withdrawals: 1,000 by year's end and complete
withdrawal in 1965, something the NSC considered to be a "strategic
fantasy".
In late October, intelligence wires
again reported that a coup against the Diem government was afoot. The
source, Vietnamese General Duong Van Minh (also known as "Big
Minh"), wanted to know the U.S. position. Kennedy instructed
Lodge to offer covert assistance to the coup, excluding
assassination. On November 1, 1963, South Vietnamese generals, led by
"Big Minh", overthrew the Diem government, arresting
and then killing Diem and Nhu. Kennedy was shocked by the deaths.
News of the coup led to renewed
confidence initially—both in America and in South Vietnam—that
the war might be won. McGeorge Bundy drafted a National Security
Action Memo to present to Kennedy upon his return from Dallas. It
reiterated the resolve to fight communism in Vietnam, with increasing
military and economic aid and expansion of operations into Laos and
Cambodia. Before leaving for Dallas, Kennedy told Michael Forrestal
that "after the first of the year ... [he wanted] an in depth
study of every possible option, including how to get out of there ...
to review this whole thing from the bottom to the top". When
asked what he thought the president meant, Forrestal said, "It
was devil's advocate stuff."
Kennedy delivers the commencement
speech at American University, June 10, 1963
Historians disagree on whether the
Vietnam War would have escalated if Kennedy had not been assassinated
and had won re-election in 1964. Fueling the debate were statements
made by Secretary of Defense McNamara in the film "The Fog of
War" that Kennedy was strongly considering pulling the United
States out of Vietnam after the 1964 election. The film also
contains a tape recording of Lyndon Johnson stating that Kennedy was
planning to withdraw, a position in which Johnson disagreed. Kennedy
had signed National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263, dated
October 11, which ordered the withdrawal of 1,000 military personnel
by year's end, and the bulk of them out by 1965. Such an action
would have been a policy reversal, but Kennedy was publicly moving in
a less hawkish direction since his speech on world peace at American
University on June 10, 1963.
At the time of Kennedy's death, no
final policy decision was made to Vietnam. In 2008 Theodore Sorensen
wrote, "I would like to believe that Kennedy would have found
a way to withdraw all American instructors and advisors [from
Vietnam]. But ... I do not believe he knew in his last weeks what he
was going to do." Sorensen added that, in his opinion,
Vietnam "was the only foreign policy problem handed off by
JFK to his successor in no better, and possibly worse, shape than it
was when he inherited it." U.S. involvement in the region
escalated until his successor Lyndon Johnson directly deployed
regular U.S. military forces for fighting the Vietnam War. After
Kennedy's assassination, President Johnson signed NSAM 273 on
November 26, 1963. It reversed Kennedy's decision to withdraw 1,000
troops, and reaffirmed the policy of assistance to the South
Vietnamese.