![]() ![]() There was a Gallup poll asking Americans to assess the last nine presidents from Kennedy forward. Well, he certainly has a hold on the public’s imagination in this country. How does Kennedy stand after all these years in the annals of American presidents? Kennedy, whose inaugural address is noted for its eloquence. January 20 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy’s enduring mystique has to do with the fact that he lives in the public imagination as a perennially young man full of promise, says Dallek, and that the Kennedy family story combines tragedy and high achievement. As for Vietnam, Dallek says, Kennedy wanted to limit U.S. Kennedy did orchestrate some foreign policy successes, Dallek says, most notably avoiding a nuclear war with the Soviet Union over the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and negotiating a Limited Test Ban Treaty the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 was one for which Kennedy chastised himself. ![]() ![]() Kennedy’s domestic agenda as president included initiatives on Medicare, civil rights, and other issues that didn’t get enacted until the Johnson administration. However, his thousand days in office didn’t yield many historic achievements, Dallek notes. Kennedy, 1917-63, says Kennedy remains the most popular U.S. Kennedy’s January 20, 1961, inaugural address, Robert Dallek, the presidential historian who wrote An Unfinished Life, John F. ![]()
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