Kennedy
The Cold War and
the Fight for Hearts
and Minds
1960-1963
Today’s Lecture
• Foreign
• Early Years
Policy
• 1960 Election
• Bay of Pigs
• Domestic
• Cuban
Policy
Missile
– Civil Rights
– The Space
Race
– ‘New
Frontier’
legislation
Crisis
• Dallas, 22nd
Nov 1963
• JFK’s Legacy
• Myth
• History
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
• Born in MA in 1917 into the prominent Catholic
Kennedy family; Harvard educated
• Elder brother Joseph Kennedy Jr. was killed in action
during WWII
• Served in the US Navy during WWII: PT-109 sunk by
Japanese; Highly decorated
inc. a Purple Heart
• Married Jacqueline Bouvier (1953)
• Two children, Caroline & JFK Jr
• Won a Pulitzer (1956)
• (secret) chronic health problems
1960 Election
• Traditional route to the presidency
– House (1946-52), Senate (1952-60) Oval Office (1960 – 63)
• Lyndon Baines Johnson as VP to balance ticket
• Eisenhower VP Richard M. Nixon ran on Rep. ticket
• Campaign
– ‘New Frontier’ vs ‘middle
way’
– TV debates
– African American vote
• Kennedy won by 118,000
votes
– Cries of corruption
Domestic
Policies
The ‘New Frontier’
• Surrounded himself with
liberal intellectuals
• Young, ‘vibrant’ family
man;
•
‘new generation’
Policies that succeeded
• Housing Act
• Clean Air Act
• Increased minimum wage and
social security
• Military spending
• Tax cuts & economic growth
• Space – Apollo project
Policies that failed
•
•
•
•
Medicare
Inc. spending on Education
Department of Urban Affairs
Civil Rights
Civil Rights
• Prior to election: weak record on civil rights and liberties
– Significant election issue – weak mandate afterwards
– High-level appointments not legislation
• Grass roots activism pushed the administration
– Freedom Rides – Ole Miss – Birmingham, Al./ Univ. of Al.
• March on Washington (1963)
– Kennedy’s Assassination
Women’s Rights
President’s Commission on the Status of Women
• December 1961 – October 1963
• ‘Cold War measure’ - early incarnation of sameness/difference
feminism
– Charged with “overcoming discriminations in government and private
employment on the basis of sex and for developing recommendations
for services which will enable women to continue their role as wives
and mothers while making a
maximum contribution to the
world around them” - PCSW
Equal Pay Act (June 10th
1963)
• Prohibited pay discrimination
on the basis of sex
• ‘New Frontier’ initiative
Foreign
Policy
Escalation of the Cold War
“We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship,
support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and
success of liberty”
- JFK, Inaugural Address, 1960
]
• Liberal anti-communism
– Cold Warrior: military build up and willingness to deploy
– Peace Corps, 1961 “reform-minded missionaries of democracy”
• Confrontation in Germany
– Berlin Wall (summer 1961)
Bay of Pigs, April 1961
• 1959 – Fidel Castro overthrew
General Batista and seized
control of Cuba
• Castro was left-wing and had
strong links with the Soviet
Union, which worried the USA
and challenged their policy of
containment
• Rhetoric and implementation of
NSC-68
• A plan was hatched soon after
Castro’s succession to restore an
US-friendly government
Bay of Pigs, April 1961
• A ‘fiasco’ from the start
• Kennedy keen to hide US involvement
• Cuban exiles trained in Guatemala to invade Cuba and
bring about a Cuban
revolution
• relied on a Cuban uprising –
dawn strikes – no air support
• Castro traded 1200 Cuban
prisoners for $53 million
of baby food and medicine
for the Cuban people
Cuban Missile
Crisis (1962)
• Castro declared Cuba as a
Communist nation
• Began construction of Soviet missile
base on Cuban coast
• Sites secretly photographed by US
spy plane
• Caused instant havoc in USA
• Kennedy ordered naval blockade
around Cuba
• Intended to prevent USSR from
delivering supplies
‘Thirteen Days’
• Anxious world watched blockade for 13 days
• Khrushchev message - removal of weapons from Cuba
– Second message - removal of Turkish missiles in return
– Kennedy ended blockade and (later and secretly) removed US
missiles from Turkey
• Establishment of the ‘red
telephone’
• Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
• Escalated arms race
• Beginning of détente
“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.“
- JFK, June 1963
Vietnam
• Minor conflict when Kennedy elected
• Cold warrior who subscribed to the domino theory
• Laos Crisis, 1961 – Communist coup narrowly avoided
– Strengthened Kennedy’s commitment to ‘saving’ Vietnam
•
‘Liberal anti-communism’
-
increased military presence,
aid and political reforms
American personnel inc. from
1,000-15,000 in a year
Misunderstanding of the locale
• Approved a coup of Diem’s
government in Nov. 1963
Dallas
• November 22nd 1963
• Open top car – President
Kennedy shot by Lee Harvey
Oswald from the window of the Texas Schoolbook
Depository – Johnson sworn in on Air Force One
• Oswald a known Communist
sympathiser
- Shot two days later by
Jack Ruby
• A ‘Thousand-Day
Presidency’
JFK’s Legacy
"Today Kennedy dead has
infinitely more force than
Kennedy living. . . Part of the
phenomenon is attributable
to the race's need for heroes. . .
But mostly the legend is the
deliberate creation of the Kennedy
family and its clients”
– Vidal (1967)
JFK’s Legacy
• Strengthened by assassination
- Didn’t create it: Lincoln vs
Garfield/ McKinley
•
‘JFK Myth’: Remembered for Camelot, Civil Rights, space
•
race, Cuban Missile Crisis, personality, affairs, accent,
inexperience, involvement in Vietnam.
- Quotable: “ask not what your country can do for you…”
• Neither negative revelations nor historical analysis has
impacted public image in popular memory
Representation
“History is a permanent debate… The
representation of American Presidents is
particularly dependent on the climate in which
historians hand down their judgements”
– Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr
• Immediately after death: Hero of Camelot
– Death of the ‘promise’ as well as the man
• Shadow of Vietnam and Watergate: Revisionism
– Charming but superficial; reckless war monger, playboy
president, corrupt son and a danger to the nation
• Post-Cold War era: Post-Revisionism
– Liberal Cold Warrior, hampered by history
Next week…
Lyndon B. Johnson and the
Great Society, 1963-1968