The election of John F. Kennedy in November 1960 was like a breath of fresh air blowing throughout the entire land. The staid, predictable 1950's which ushered in the politics of superficial tranquility and an era of conformity was drawing to a close. If the country had largely coasted through the previous decade, new frontiers and possibilities suddenly appeared over the horizon. The charismatic, young President challenged all Americans to work harder to give of themselves to their country and to scale new heights. Optimism and excitement seemed to be the new buzz words.
It was to be the dawn of a new period of American renewal in more ways than one.
President John F. Kennedy delivering his 1961 Inaugural Speech and two-year old John, Jr. playing under his father's desk in the Oval Office (Photograph: Stanley Tretick/AP)
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The "Moon Speech"
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
You can watch President John F. Kennedy's "Moon Speech" in full in the above video. It was delivered at Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas on September 12, 1962.
Under Kennedy, the "Age of Camelot" ushered in new ways of thinking and fostered new ideas
to move the country forward
[T]here began in Kennedy's time an effort of government to bring reason to bear on facts which were becoming almost too complicated for human minds to grasp. No Merlins advised John F. Kennedy, no Galahads won high praise in his service. The knights of his round table were able, tough, ambitious men, capable of kindness, also capable of error, but as a group of men more often right than wrong and astonishingly incorruptible. What made them a group and established their companionship was their leader. Of them all, Kennedy was the toughest, the most intelligent, the most attractive - and inside, the least romantic. He was a realistic dealer in men, a master of games who understood the importance of ideas. He assumed his responsibilities fully. He advanced the cause of America at home and abroad. But he also posed for the first time the great question of the sixties and seventies: What kind of people are we Americans? What do we want to become?
Jack Coleman, "1963: Theodore White eulogy for JFK links Kennedys and Camelot" - Cape Cod Today. It discusses historian Theodore White's famous article published in the December 6, 1963 issue of LIFE magazine. That article was based on a conversation that White had with Jackie Kennedy soon after JFK's assassination and one that would link the myth of Camelot and the Kennedys for years to come. Photograph source: Old LIFE Magazines.
It all came crashing down on November 22, 1963. When President Kennedy died that fateful day in Dallas, Texas, he had become the fourth president to be assassinated while in office. With him died the dreams of millions of his supporters and admirers he had inspired during his short stay in office.
"We Are All Mortal"
Today, should total war ever break out again -- no matter how -- our two countries would become the primary targets. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first twenty-four hours. And even in the cold war, which brings burdens and dangers to so many countries, including this nation's closest allies -- our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting to weapons massive sums of money that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counterweapons...
So, let us not be blind to our differences -- but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.
This JFK speech was the Commencement Address at American University in Washington, D.C. on June 10, 1963 and called for an end to the arms race with the Soviet Union. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev called it the "best speech ever made by an American President." You can watch much of the speech in the above video and also here.
We will never know how JFK might have fulfilled his considerable potential but he did have several
notable accomplishments: preventing nuclear war with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis; managing a prosperous economy that had been stagnant towards the end of the Eisenhower Administration; initiating an expanded space program that led to man's landing on the man within the decade; and introducing a civil rights bill that became the law of the land the year after his death.
A new book by author Stephen King examines this issue and asks an interesting hypothetical question: had JFK lived, how different a path would this country had taken over the past five decades?
As the 1960s dawned, the future was a central part of the American experience. From "The Jetsons" to Kennedy's New Frontier, we shaped and shared optimistic visions of it, made it part of the political dialogue, elevated it to one of the fundamental expressions of our national optimism.
That has long since faded. Today, visions of the future are generally dystopian and menacing...
Boomers and Beatles may have believed in yesterday, but salvation doesn't necessarily lie there. No matter how deeply we feel, King seems to say, the answers were never just blowin' in the wind. They weren't even about whether one young president lived or died. They were, and remain, far more complicated.
Ted Anthony, "Stephen King, JFK and Lost Boomer Dreams" - San Francisco Chronicle.
One thing we do know: as Dion sang in 1968, "the good they die young."
Anybody here seen my old friend John?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked around and he's gone.
What could -- and for the country's sake, should -- have been.
Many of you will remember this diary that I posted last year on the first anniversary of Senator Ted Kennedy's death -- Remembering Senator Ted Kennedy.
In both the diary as well as in the comments section, there are about forty poignant editorial cartoons remembering Teddy and the Kennedy Family. Here's one of those cartoons: