Sublime

On November 8, 1960, forty-two-year-old John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States.

May 25, 1961. It was in this speech that Kennedy announced that he would be holding his first face-to-face meeting with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev later that spring. But the address will always be remembered for the astounding proposal he laid before the legislators. “I believe,” he declared, “this nation should commit itself to achieving the

Kennedy’s inaugural stands with Franklin Roosevelt’s great first address as an exemplar of inspirational language and a call to civic duty. It began, as Thomas Jefferson’s had in 1801, during the first transfer of power from one party to another, with a reminder of shared national values rather than partisanship. “We are all Federalists. We are all

John F. Kennedy, the most seductive American public figure of modern times, was a walking paradox: an East Coast aristocrat with a love of the common man, an obviously masculine man—a war hero—with a vulnerability you could sense underneath, an intellectual who loved popular culture.

Kennedy promised to fight for civil rights with all the powers of the presidency, “as legislative leader, as Chief Executive, and as the center of moral power of the United States.”

JFK.

For all John F. Kennedy’s remarkable ability—his eloquence on the podium, whether for a speech or a press conference—to inspire a nation, to rally it to its better, most humane, aspirations, and for all his triumphs in dealing with the rest of the world—the Peace Corps, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Cuban Missile Crisis—few of his domestic goals

“President Kennedy’s eloquence was designed to make men think; President Johnson’s hammer blows are designed to make men act.”

within a year both Alan Shepard and Virgil Grissom were launched into space. Then, on February 20, 1962, came John Glenn’s historic 75,679-mile, three-orbital flight.