Kemnnedy: His Life & Legacy
Editor: Ben Nussbaum
Chief Content Officer: June Kikuchi
Art Director: Cindy Kassebaum
Production Coordinator: Leah Rosalez
Chief Executive Officer:Mark Harris
Chief Financial Officer: Nicole Fabian
Chief Sales Officer: Jeff Scharf
Vice President, Consumer Marketing: Beth Freeman Reynolds
Digital General Manager: Melissa Kauffman
Marketing Director: Lisa MacDonald
Production Manager: Laurie Panaggio
Book Devision General Manager: Christopher Reggio
Editorial, Production and Corporate Office
3 Burroughs, Irvine, CA 92618
(949) 855-8822
Kennedy: His Life & Legacy is published by I-5 Publishing, LLC, 3 Burroughs, Irvine, CA 92618-2804.
2013 by I-5 Publishing, LLC.
eBook ISBN: 978-1 62008-137-2
All rights reserved. Reproduction of any material from this issue in whole of in part is strictly prohibited.
Registration No. R126851765
A New Leader for a New Generation
John F. Kennedy took office as a wave of change refashioned America.
by Jason K. Duncan
A fter taking the oath of office as the 35th President of the United States on Jan. 20, 1961, John Fitzgerald Kennedy boldly declared that the nations leadership had just been transferred to a new generation of Americans. Indeed it had. Kennedy represented a new leader for a new America, a country quickly becoming the United States we recognize today. A Changing Nation
Born in 1917, Kennedy was the first president born in the 20th century. He was also the youngest president ever elected, just 43 years old when he took office. Kennedys election at such a young age was the result, in part, of changes in how presidential candidates won their partys nomination through primaries and caucuses rather than appealing mainly to party leaders.
Kennedy took the helm of a nation that had shed its traditional isolationism to become the leading military power in the world. Its shores untouched by World War II, the United States was for the most part prosperous, satisfied and looking to the future with confidence. The country was nearing the end of the postwar baby boom, in which the nations population surged from 106 million people in 1920 to 150 million in 1950 to nearly 180 million in 1960.
Fueled by U.S. economic dominance of the world, a growing number of Americans were joining the middle class, with more Americans than ever finishing high school and attending college. As one example of the quick rise in educational levels, in 1900, a mere 26,000 Americans earned a college degree (of which only 5,000 were women). In 1940, 180,000 Americans earned a college degree. That number rocketed to 430,000 by 1950 as returning soldiers took advantage of the G.I. Bill of Rights.
Since the end of World War II, family income, adjusted for inflation, doubled. Many of these newly prosperous were moving out of the nations urban core and into the expanding suburbs made possible by the automobile. Throughout the Depression and World War II, most households did not own a car. In the 1950s car ownership boomed, and when Kennedy took office, about 80 percent of American families owned a car roughly the same percentage as two decades later when Ronald Reagan took office.
The early 1960s, however, were not without problems. The United States was well into the second decade of its Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union, a struggle that had shaped the U.S. since 1945. Indeed, Kennedy described his own generation as tempered by war, and disciplined by a hard and bitter peace. Some observers also detected smugness and complacency about the troubles that simmered beneath the surface of society. African Americans were especially determined to ensure that the United States finally live up to its promise of justice for all.
Kennedys inaugural speech was broadcast across the United States and beyond on live television, a relatively new medium but one he had come to master. In 1950, less than 10 percent of American homes had television; by 1960, that number had increased dramatically to nearly 90 percent.
No time in the modern era (or any era) is truly innocent, and revelations about Kennedy himself since 1963 have discredited much of the image he carefully presented to the nation of a young, healthy and devoted family man. Still, the hope and the poignancy which Kennedys life and death evoked at the peak of what has rightly been called the American Century retain a powerful hold on the nations historical memory.
The Path to the White House
Although Kennedy came to represent the face of modern America, his origins were quite humble. His Irish-Catholic ancestors fled the potato famine that devastated Ireland in the middle of the 19th century. Settling in Boston, the Kennedys and the Fitzgeralds (his mothers family) established themselves through small businesses and later entered politics. John Kennedy was born in 1917 to parents living in upper-middle-class comfort and well on their way to great wealth. Kennedys father, Joseph, was an ambitious man with many business ventures among them various ownership stakes in film companies placing the Kennedy family at the forefront of a new industry that would have a profound impact on America, including its politics.
The Kennedys in 1948 in Hyannis Port. From left: John, Jean, Rose, Joe Sr., Edward (kneeling),Patricia, Robert and Eunice.
Young Jack Kennedy was likable and intelligent, although he battled frequent health problems . During his final years at Harvard, he became more serious about his academic work. His senior thesis was published in 1940 as Why England Slept , a study of how Great Britain failed to rearm adequately in the face of the mounting threat to peace from Nazi Germany.
Kennedys education in the modern world continued when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy before Pearl Harbor. World War II brought the United States more fully into the Pacific, where it has remained highly engaged ever since. Securing a combat position once the U.S. entered the war, Kennedy was seriously injured when the small vessel he commanded, PT-109, was split in two by a Japanese destroyer in the South Pacific in August 1943.
Entering politics along with many of his fellow veterans, Kennedy aimed high from the outset, gaining election to the U.S. House of Representatives from a Boston-area district. From the start, Kennedy stressed his youth; his first campaign slogan was the New Generation Offers a Leader. Not yet 30 years old, the neophyte drew young war veterans and political newcomers into his campaign and skillfully used modern methods of publicity. His greatest efforts once in office were directed at moving up the political ladder.
