When John F. Kennedy entered the presidential limousine at Love Field in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, he began his ride into history. That journey continues even today and we call it the Kennedy legacy. This course will explore the Presidency, assassination, and lasting legacy of President John F. Kennedy. Students will learn how JFK’s life, administration, and tragic death have influenced the general public, the media, and each of the nine U.S. presidents who followed. Understanding the Kennedy legacy and being able to identify elements of his legacy within the context of modern politics helps understand many of the vexing problems that developed over the last half century as well as many of the challenges that confront us today. November 22, 1963 was so powerful a moment that in the fifty years since the assassination, every U.S. President that followed JFK has used Kennedy’s words and actions in an effort to craft their own political image. Why does Kennedy’s influence persist, and will it continue? What are the effects? We’ll address these questions and more as we explore The Kennedy Half Century. Follow on Twitter: @JFKclass.
Kennedy's Legislative Career
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From the course by University of Virginia
The Kennedy Half Century
270 ratings
From the lesson
John F. Kennedy's Rise to Power
Meet the Instructors
Professor Larry J. SabatoRobert Kent Gooch Professor of Politics
Director, UVA Center for Politics
[MUSIC]
Turning now to President Kennedy's legislative career.
For the most part, Kennedy was a party loyalist and a back bencher in the House.
He made friends with some of the 69 other World War Two veterans elected to Congress
in 1946, including a young Republican legislator from California, Richard Nixon.
No doubt to Kennedy's surprise, it was Nixon's career that began to rocket, not
Kennedy's.
First, Nixon headed up a widely watched investigation of the
House Un-American Activities Committee about
communist infiltration of the State Department.
This eventually led to the perjury conviction
of former department official Alger Hiss who had
denied under oath that he had passed
sensitive papers to a communist named Whittaker Chambers.
Then, Nixon capitalized on the publicity, and
captured an open US senate seat in California in 1950.
Aligned with the GOP right wing, and seen as an up and comer, the 39 year old Nixon
was tapped by the party's factional leaders to be
Dwight Eisenhower's running mate for vice president in 1952.
While Nixon was sky rocketing to high office,
Kennedy had just treaded water in the House.
Finally, John Kennedy decided to make his move in 1952, boldly
challenging the incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Junior.
Lodge was a moderate in a state then inclined toward the Republican Party.
He'd been handily elected three times, though he'd resigned his original seat to
go fight in World War Two, and was elected to the state's other senate
seat in 1946. Lodge was favored to win again in 1952.
But he probably spent too much time working
for Eisenhower, and too little time working for himself.
Moreover, Lodge had pushed hard to defeat conservative Senator
Robert Taft of Ohio, at the GOP Presidential nominating convention.
And Taft's backers were furious at Lodge, and swore revenge.
Meanwhile, the Kennedy family was unleashing a clan based campaign
that the nation, as a whole, would see 8 years hence.
Mother Rose Kennedy and JFK's sisters held teas for tens of thousands.
While brother, Robert, managed the campaign, and father Joe funded it.
Even arranging a half million dollar loan
to a floundering Boston newspaper that promptly
flipped its backing from Lodge to Kennedy. That's how things were done back then.
The Kennedy Lodge senate campaign was an ultimate Massachusetts grudge match.
Lodge's grandfather had defeated Kennedy's grandfather
for a U.S. Senate seat in 1916.
But more important, the Lodges were Protestant, blue
bloods that had dominated Bay State politics for generations.
The Kennedys, though well off, represented the
burgeoning population of working class Irish Catholics.
Who deeply resented the Brahmins, the blue bloods.
In an astounding upset, John F.
Kennedy became a senator elect in November 1952.
Defeating Lodge by about 70,000 votes out of 2.36 million cast.
Remarkably
JFK achieved that three point percentage victory
while Eisenhower was carrying Massachusetts by 209,000 votes.
It's rare that you see an election like that one.
Despite this auspicious beginning, Kennedy's
senate years were marked by troubles.
Mostly of the health nature. Sickly as a child and young man.
At one point in the 1930's,
diagnosed, probably incorrectly, with leukemia
and certainly suffering from Addison's Disease
and spinal deterioration aggravated by his war injuries and cortisone treatments.
Kennedy had several major back operations while in his first Senate term.
At times he was even near death, and priests
administered extreme unction, the last rites of the Catholic faith.
But
Kennedy's will to live was strong and he pulled through, assisted by his
new wife Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. Jack had married Jackie in 1953.
In a wedding attended by Jack's good friend, Vice
President and Mrs. Richard Nixon. John Kennedy used his convalescence
to work with Abe Theodore Sorensen on a book, entitled Profiles in Courage.
This book highlighted US senators throughout American
history who had risked their careers for principle.
The book received the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957.
>> It was an interesting, job because all of
us who hold a position in a legislature are
concerned with the problems of how other senators and
congressmen have endured the pressures which all of us undergo.
One of the most heartening things about it has been the fact that the United States
information service has chosen it to be translated
in order to explain one page of American life.
I have here the copy that is in Vietnamese, and here
a copy in Japanese, and it's also been translated into Hebrew.
Used in the country of Israel and also in Spanish, and I have here a letter from
George Allen which came this summer, the head of the
United States Information Service in which he says that, Profiles
in Courage has proved to be exceptionally effective in promoting
a clearer understanding of American statesmen among our foreign audiences.
And of course that's been one of the very
beneficial things which have sprung out of the book.
>> Sorensen was clearly the co-author,
but this was denied at the time.
>> Senator Kennedy, as a member of the
foreign relations committee you have an opportunity to
get briefed on all of the important foreign
relations problems, what we're trying to do about them.
What do you consider the number one problem
we have today in the field of foreign relations?
>> Well, I think the number one problem of course, is to win the support of all
of the people who are, as of today are uncommitted.
Particularly in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, who are
maintaining a neutral position between the Soviet Union and ourselves.
And they are countries which have been held under colonial domination.
And they desire to be free and they desire to
do something about a very, extremely low standard of living.
And I suppose for the United States to demonstrate our interest in them.
Our desire to help them lift themselves up.
The feeling that
they can win a reasonable place in the world
through democratic procedures rather than turning to the communist.
Now this becomes difficult in cases where countries
are held by western powers under colonial control.
Then our, our problem becomes more difficult.
We want to befriend these people.
We fight against communism when it happens in Hungary.
which we should against Communist Imperialism or colonialism.
We have to show the same policies towards those of our allies who hold
colonial possessions through the world.
In other words, we have to win the support of the people who hold a
balance of power in the world by making
them feel that we're vitally interested in them.
And as a, this is, this power, this desire to be
free and run your own destiny is the best weapon we have.
It is certainly the thing that is going
to cause the greatest discomfort to the Soviet Union.
This, this feeling in Hungary and Poland and
East Germany and Lithuania and Latvia and Estonia,
the desire of these people to be independent, and
to having the communists out of their, their government.
That is the best force we have.
It's the best force within the Soviet Union itself.
People who don't want to be held down by a, a totalitarian system so that we
have to support that force in the West, in Africa, in Asia, behind the iron curtain.
How we do that is to me the great problem that we have in the U.N. and out of it.
But I think that's where we have to direct ourselves, and we have
to hew the line of supporting the desire of people to be independent.
Against the Soviet Union, and against those
of our allies who occasionally may have transgressed.
>> Unfortunately, these segments, of necessity, have to be short.
And the details of history are fascinating.
I would encourage you, not just to read my book, The Kennedy Half Century
But to read many books about John Kennedy when you find out the context
of the times, you can begin to understand what made Jack Kennedy tick.
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