“John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States. When he became president in January 1961, he was 43 and the youngest person ever to lead the nation.” (6 Williams)
John F. Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was born in a rich Irish family, so from his early childhood John received great manners and education. John’s father was a very strict man, and he always wanted his sons to succeed in everything they started, so from the young age the future President knew no failure.
In 1940 he graduated with honors from Harvard University. Then, during the U.S. entry into the war he enlisted in the Navy, after which he was twice awarded for bravery.
After the war, Kennedy for some period of time was engaged in activities correspondence, and then began to try his hand in politics. In 1947 he was elected as a member of the House of Representatives from the Democratic Party, and defeated his opponent by a margin of five times. Subsequently, Kennedy was twice re-elected.
In 1952, Kennedy ran for the Senate. Despite of the advantages of the Republicans, Kennedy won. Kennedy considered it to be a notable fact of his biography, as his first election victory was partly a kind of " response" to the grandfather of his rival Senator G. Lodge who won the election to the Senate in 1916, in which Kennedy’s grandfather also took part.
Senator Kennedy was actively supporting policies of price regulation and fees for housing, public housing development, as well as protecting the interests of trade union organizations. As a Senator, Kennedy introduced a number of new bills.
In 1957, Kennedy published a work that greatly influenced his political biography and eased his way into big-time politics. He wrote a biographical work about American politics " Profiles in Courage " for which he was awarded the most prestigious prize in the field of journalism, the Pulitzer Prize. This book brought him national fame. As the author of such a grandiose work, Kennedy was put in charge of an important project, he had to pick the five greatest senators of all time, whose portraits hang in the Senate intended to reception hall .
Kennedy was re-elected for the next term in 1958. In the elections, he received more than seventy percent of the votes.
In 1956, at the national convention of the Democratic Party, one of the candidates for President, Adlai Stevenson made an unusual offer - he decided to organize elections to choose a man who would be his partner as a candidate for vice-president. This provided Kennedy with an access to the national political arena. However during that election he could not resist the powerful opponent, who was already very popular and won the primaries.
Kennedy began serious preparations for the next presidential election. He did everything to attract public attention and gain popularity among the general public: published in famous newspapers and magazines of the country, became a member of the highly touted McClellan Committee, masterfully conducted by moderate Senate bill on reforms in the sphere of labor relations. So Kennedy quickly became a serious authority outside his state and has achieved a victory in the election with a narrow margin in the 119 000 votes.
So grand event happened in the political biography of Kennedy: January 20, 1961 he took the oath of the president of the United States. “In his inaugural speech he spoke of the need for all Americans to be active citizens. “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what can you do for your country”, he said”. His presidential program was called the program " New Frontier “. It included the creation of the Peace Corps, increasing the minimum wage, as well as powerful social changes, such as the liberalization of social security of citizens and help for distressed areas of the country, and unemployment benefits. Congress approved the program, but some other president's proposals in the social sphere were rejected.
Kennedy also failed in an attempt to promote his legislative projects, although he enjoyed the enormous popularity. It was mainly associated with fine overall situation in the country, which, according to the majority, did not require any changes.
Kennedy’s political program for internal development issues of the U.S. was oriented on the acceleration of the economic growth of the country. He adopted a number of laws, which led to the reduction of tax payments, fought to end racial discrimination against the Negro population of the country. “JFK had committed himself—and the nation—to a course on which on other country had never embarked successfully: the full and complete integration of a racial minority into a nation’s life.” (Barnes 8)
Kennedy's foreign policy was quite flexible: he understood the need to adapt international political action to change the ratio of U.S. forces in the international arena, he put forward a program of new frontiers. The administration of President on international issues followed the course of so-called "flexible response”. Thus, Kennedy acted immediately in two directions: to strengthen and develop the military power of the United States, using economic and ideological principles to maintain the capitalist system and the containment of communism, and also played for the diplomatic methods of finding solutions to disputes with other states, thus showing a more realistic approach to relations with the USSR.
In late 1963, Kennedy began preparations for the upcoming elections, which required regular trips across the country for campaign speeches. In one of these trips in November of the same year he was mortally wounded. In the city of Dallas, when the president was riding in the car, he was shot twice. Lee Harvey Oswald was considered as a main suspect in the murder, however he was soon also killed. The conclusive evidence of Oswald’s guilt in the assassination of Kennedy was never found, and the facts contained in the versions of the subsequent investigation, are very still controversial. One of the reasons of the assassination was called the aggression against the policy of the president, in particular, the signing by the U.S. government in August 1963 the Moscow treaty, banning nuclear weapons tests. However no one knows for sure, as “hundreds of books have been written on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the various investigations of the crime.”(Davis) The assassination of JFK will probably always remain a “quagmire for historians”. (Davis)
John Kennedy is one of the most popular American Presidents, and I am deeply convinced that he will always remain so. “In his thousand days he gave the country back to its own best self. And he taught the world that the process of rediscovering America was not over.” (Schlesinger)
Works Cited
Barnes, John A. John F. Kennedy on Leadership: The Lessons and Legacy of a President. New York: AMACOM, 2007. Print.
"Life of John F. Kennedy." - John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2014.
Schlesinger, Arthur M. Foreword. A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Xvi. Print.
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. Introduction. Contract on America: The Mafia Murder of President John F. Kennedy. New York: Shapolsky, 1988. Vii. Print.
Williams, Brian. The Assassination of President Kennedy. Berkshire: Crabtree, 2002. Print.
