(1917 – 1963) John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the first “celebrity president” (1961–3). After an undistinguished career in the House of Representatives and the Senate, Kennedy campaigned for president as a generational critic of the Eisenhower years, which he linked with economic recession, educational mediocrity a missile gap and international humiliations (for example the U-2 spy plane, Castro in Cuba, “Yankee Go Home” riots).

He anticipated being a foreign-policy leader, with Keynesian techniques sufficing to revive and maintain economic growth.

Kennedy brought more than a touch of glamour to the White House; he was America’s first president born in the twentieth century movie-star handsome, married to the exquisite Jacqueline, and with a Harvard brain trust of “the best and the brightest.” The Thousand Days of what would be called Gamelot seemed to integrate the worlds of Washington, Hollywood, Broadway and Cambridge: Frank Sinatra, Robert Frost and the Bundys.

Kennedy’s foreign policy was driven by a critique of Eisenhower’s strategy of “massive retaliation,” a budget-tight reliance on nuclear deterrence, air power and CIA machinations. Kennedy offered “flexible response,” a more ambitious call for the ability to contain the Soviets along the East-West axis, but also to rise to the challenge of national wars of liberation with “counter-insurgency” As such, Kennedy inspired liberal idealists to take seriously the emergence of the Third World through both the Green Berets and the Peace Corps.

Domestically Kennedy discovered that the civil rights revolution—the sit-ins and the freedom rides of 1960 and 1961—forced his administration to respond to the call for racial justice. Partly in response to the ways in which segregation harmed US interests among people of color in the Third World, partly reacting to the pressures generated by events in the South, Kennedy reluctantly moved by 1963 to embrace legislative proposals to eliminate segregation.

On other domestic issues, the Kennedy administration had difficulties in achieving legislative victories in seeking modestly to expand welfare state programs; he is credited with stimulating the economy with a tax cut and upholding the public interest in forcing US Steel to rescind price increases. For the most part, he was a corporate liberal, committed to technocratic solutions within a pro-business, welfare state format.

Kennedy faced his most crucial tests abroad, initially during the Berlin Crisis, which led to the construction of the Berlin Wall and following the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Castro’s Cuba. Kennedy’s ad hoc style of leadership, which paid insufficient attention to issues of Castro’s strengths, matters of terrain and the role of air support, contributed to the debacle.

Following this defeat, Kennedy continued to seek the subversion of the Castro Revolution through the CIA’s Operation Mongoose. When intelligence discovered Soviet missile silos being constructed in Cuba, Kennedy responded with a dramatic, televised challenge of a naval blockade to Khrushchev, which brought the world closer to nuclear war than at any previous moment—or any since. Khrushchev adhered to the blockade, allowing time for compromises to be made—Soviet missiles removed, a US pledge not to invade Cuba and a secret agreement by the US to remove its Jupiter missiles from Turkey.

Kennedy increased US military personnel in South Vietnam from 600 to over 17,000 in response to the military successes of the National Liberation Front. Domestic opposition finally deposed Ngo Dinh Diem in a military coup and assassination in November 1963. Historians grapple with the “what if” regarding Kennedy and Vietnam.

The weight of evidence suggests that Kennedy was likely to increase the Americanization of the war in the face of an impending communist victory At the same time, there were signs of some moderation of Kennedy’s Cold War militancy (for example the Test-ban Treaty and the Washington—Moscow Hot-line).

The legacy of this first Roman Catholic president remains as controversial as the Warren Commission Report’s conclusions about his assassination on November 22, 1963. He inspired many Americans, particularly among youth, to ask “what they could do for their country” In that sense, Kennedy’s New Frontier—astronauts, Green Berets, Peace Corps and VISTA volunteers—served as a contradictory catalyst to the social challenges associated with the 1960s.