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John Fitzgerald Kennedy

1917–1963

 

The election of John F. Kennedy as thirty-fifth president of the United States in November 1960 marked for Irish people everywhere a peak of achievement and national pride.  He was the first Irishman and the first Catholic to be elected to that high office.  Until then the prejudices which were deeply ingrained in American life had prevented both the Irish and the Catholics from getting to the White House.  Though John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the wealthy son of a millionaire, was far removed from long-prevailing images of the Irish, his wit, handsome demeanour, love of written and spoken word and delight in politics of all kinds identified him as Irish through and through.

      Kennedy's eventual visit to Ireland (26-29th June 1963) was a momentous occasion, and a significant one.  He spoke to the Irish nation on behalf of millions of emigrants.  At the spot from which Patrick Kennedy had set out two generations before, he said: 'When my great-grandfather left here to become a cooper in East Boston, he carried nothing with him except a strong religious faith and a strong desire for liberty.  If he hadn't left, I would be working at the Albatross Company across the road.'

      The existence of that factory was an important development.  For those heady days in the 1960s marked a transition from the older rural Ireland his grandfather had emigrated from to a new modern, industrialized Ireland, a democracy very much in the American model.  For many commentators and historians, the Kennedy visit, coming so closely on the arrival of television in Ireland and the Vatican Council, brought about a rapid series of social and religious changes that transformed Ireland.

      To many young people, Kennedy seemed to suggest a new kind of model for public life.  Though his reputation has since been the object of much reassessment, his historical importance in the immediate days of the 1960s cannot be lessened.  To Irish people everywhere he became the leading example of what the Irish nation could achieve.

      His great-grandparents had gone to the United States from Ireland, part of that great wave of people whom he would write about as the makers of America in his brief book A Nation of Emigrants.  His grandfathers had been successful in business and politics, John Francis Fitzgerald being mayor of Boston.  His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, himself successful in business, was a supporter of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and served as American ambassador to London.

      Joe Kennedy was naturally ambitious for his children.  After the death of his eldest son, his ambitions became centred on Jack.  Though Jack's education had been indifferent, he was widely read.  As an explanation of why the war had come, he wrote Why England Slept (1940) during his father's time in London.  During the war he served with the US navy in the South Pacific, and when his PT boat was sunk an old back problem reasserted itself.  Illness was a problem for the rest of his life.  Though it was not obvious to many except his family and friends, half the days of his life were days of pain, as his brother Robert later pointed out.

      In 1946 he was elected to Congress from the eleventh Massachusetts district.  He proved to be liberal and farsighted.  In 1952 he was elected to the Senate and in 1953 he married.  Though he was independent-minded on many issues, Kennedy did not resist the demagoguery of Sen. Joseph McCarthy (a family friend).  Hospitalized by re-occurring trouble from his back injury, he was unable to be present for the vote on the motion of censure in the Senate against McCarthy.  It was during this illness that he wrote Profiles in Courage (1956), which won a Pulitzer Prize.

      In the book he defined his own outlook: 'A man does what he must, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality.'

      He failed to gain the vice-presidential nomination in 1956, but began a campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for president in 1960.  He gained this, and went on to fight Richard Nixon.  The race was marked by the innovation of television debates, which many felt Kennedy won.  Though he barely won the popular vote, he carried the electoral college, 303 to 219.  He was the second youngest man ever elected president, as well as the first Catholic and the first born in the twentieth century.

      The events of his brief presidency were memorable, but the most critical may have been the Cuban missile crisis.  The most serious East-West stand-off since the end of World War II evolved out of Russia's presence in Cuba, the obverse of American presence in Asia.  It was perceived as part of the world-wide menace of communism on the advance, especially in Southeast Asia.  The stand-off ended on 26th October 1962 when the Russians agreed to withdraw.

      It was under Kennedy that the inexorable growth of US involvement in the defence of South Vietnam against the liberation drive of northern patriots began, but Kennedy also began efforts to disengage from the problem.  He also met the Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev for a summit in Vienna in 1961.

      At home, too, Kennedy faced many problems, but on two fronts he made great strides.  He was a young man, and to the impatient but idealistic generation of the 1960s he seemed to speak with a recognizable voice.  To the black community, then in the throes of the civil rights movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr, he won respect.  Kennedy, too, came from a community which had suffered exile, segregation, and intolerance.  But his liberal ideas were not always shared by other Americans, or other Irish Americans.  His admirers knew that John Kennedy had enemies, but they could not have guessed what final form that enmity would take.

      The achievements of John Kennedy have been eclipsed by the circumstances of his death (by assassination in Dallas, Texas, on 22 November 1963).  For many people of Irish descent, his real achievement was not what he did as president, but that he was elected to that office at all.  He remains one of the greatest of those of Irish descent.