Hey Queen's, congratulations on making it almost through week 11 (hopefully) in one piece! Perhaps lost in the flurry of assignments, papers and labs is the fact that this week also marks the 54th years since the death of President Kennedy. JFK remains a pop culture icon today on the back of his promises of generational change in his 1960 campaign, the vaunted reputation of the Kennedy name in Democratic Party circles, and of course the curious circumstances surrounding the assassination that would cut his administration short. But his life is a treasure trove of interesting stories and experiences that in some cases approach mythology, admittedly no doubt at least due in part to his wife Jackie's retelling of his thousand days in the White House as "Camelot".
Kennedy would lose a brother during WWII, and he himself would command a unit in the Pacific theater. His time in the war is sometimes overlooked due to his later prominence, but he would be involved in a multi-day odyssey where he would save the lives of several of his squadmates. A Japanese destroyer would ram his small P-T boat during a nighttime operation, throwing Kennedy and many others clear of the vessel and into the ocean. Gathering the survivors, Kennedy would spearhead a three mile swim to safety, pulling his incapacitated crew mate Patrick McMahon along by clamping a belt between his teeth. For his bravery he was awarded several commendations, including a Purple Heart. Kennedy had been a varsity swimmer at Harvard, and his endurance quite possibly saved the life of his comrades that night. But the initial collision had also ruptured a disc in his back, an injury that would plague him for the rest of his life.
Returning to Harvard for a moment, it would be comforting to think that Kennedy was the run of the mill university student, but despite not being a particularly remarkable student his university career would end up being far more eventful than most. Kennedy spent six months in 1938 as a secretary to his father, who was then serving as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom. Kennedy would reflect on his time there in his senior thesis, detailing what he saw as the country's unpreparedness for WWII. This thesis would later be adapted into a bestselling book titled (you might have heard of it) Why England Slept. Not bad for a guy who had yet to graduate.
Another aspect of Kennedy's life sometimes lost in the shuffle is his faith. This may not seem significant to us today, but his Catholicism had long been seen as a stumbling block amongst Democratic Party bigwigs who stymied his efforts to run against Eisenhower in 1955. Their fears weren't entirely misplaced, as anti-Catholic prejudice had contributed to the defeat of Democratic candidate Al Smith in 1928. And lest you think by 1960 attitudes had changed significantly, the Democratic Primary that year would reveal a different story.
Kennedy would enter the race as an outsider, as most of the party apparatus was backing Hubert Humphrey (who would go on to serve as VP under LBJ). Back then participation in the state primaries wasn't a prerequisite for securing the nomination, but state delegates were increasingly clamoring for a greater say in who won the party nomination. Kennedy decided to mount a challenge in several states in a bid to circumvent party leaders who told the 42 year old relatively inexperienced Senator that he should "wait his turn". He would employ his father's fortune to build a professional operation that used television ads and an unprecedented ground operation to build his profile nationwide. The strategy worked, as Humphrey was forced to hastily campaign in the remaining primaries in the face of Kennedy's rising poll numbers. Kennedy was seemingly invincible, as his charisma and youthful appearance gelled nicely with his promises of renewed prosperity and generational change.
But the party still worried that his faith would dent his appeal in a national election, as Catholic districts were a huge pillar of Kennedy's support in the primaries. Humphrey was hoping to capitalize on this, even as his campaign was running low on funds. West Virginia offered an opportunity to break this narrative, as it was a Protestant-dominant state where anti-Catholicism was rumoured to be rampant. In the winter of 1959 things looked promising, as Kennedy maintained a substantial lead in early polling conducted there. As his national profile increased however, Kennedy's staffers would sound the alarm over his plummeting numbers in West Virginia- the supposedly safe lead had turned into a 20 point deficit, as voters learned of his Catholicism.
How Kennedy would dramatically reverse his fortunes in the state bears instructive value to anyone who aspires to become a political operative. News would break that anti-Catholic flyers were being distributed, and while Protestant Hubert Humphrey would vehemently deny (some would later claim Kennedy's campaign leaked it themselves) having anything to do with it, his visible frustration with Kennedy's moneyed campaign and his own sagging fortunes led many to believe he had done so anyways. Kennedy's Catholicism now in the national spotlight, he took the opportunity to not just take umbrage at such an underhand attack, but offer a reassurance to Americans during a speech in Texas that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside when I read it now, 50 years later:
I would not look with favor upon a president working to subvert the First Amendment's guarantees of religious liberty. Nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so. And neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test — even by indirection — for it. If they disagree with that safeguard, they should be out openly working to repeal it.
I want a chief executive whose public acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none; who can attend any ceremony, service or dinner his office may appropriately require of him; and whose fulfillment of his presidential oath is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation.
This is the kind of America I believe in, and this is the kind I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we may have a "divided loyalty," that we did "not believe in liberty," or that we belonged to a disloyal group that threatened the "freedoms for which our forefathers died."
And in fact ,this is the kind of America for which our forefathers died, when they fled here to escape religious test oaths that denied office to members of less favored churches; when they fought for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom; and when they fought at the shrine I visited today, the Alamo.
His invocation of his family's military history and continued service to the country, and further tying it to the Founding Fathers' conception of America was a compelling message that swept away any remaining doubts of Kennedy's suitability for the office. His furious campaigning in West Virginia would hand him a decisive victory and force a broke Humphrey from the race, clearing his path to the nomination. As for running against Kennedy, he would grumble that it "felt like an independent merchant competing against a chain store."
The last bill Kennedy signed into law is truly a testament to his forward thinking. On Halloween 1963, Kennedy signed legislation designed to free many thousands of Americans with mental illnesses from life in institutions, a fate that had befallen his sister. It created over a thousand outpatient mental health centers that offered community-based care instead of brutal, ineffective techniques that severely limited the patient's quality of life.
To have a holistic understanding a person it is important to go off the beaten track and to look at things that are often ignored or displaced in people’s memories by more dramatic or exciting narratives, or even ones such as Camelot that largely ignore reality. But now over 50 years later, that's not to say that his legacy is not an immense one. Kennedy represented a passing of the torch from one generation to the next, and his administration's groundwork on issues that would define the next several decades reflects this.
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