https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK
Persian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Kennedy, and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in the White House Cabinet Room on April 13, 1962.
Pres. Kennedy and Vice Pres. Johnson.
Meeting Nikita Khrushchev in 1961.
Kennedy with future Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt in the Oval Office in 1963.
Kennedy delivers thecommencement speech atAmerican University, June 10, 1963
Kennedy delivering his speech in West Berlin
John F. Kennedy visiting the John Barry Memorial at Crescent Quay in Wexford, Ireland.
President Kennedy in motorcade in Patrick Street, Cork, in Ireland on June 28, 1963.
President Kennedy in Fort Worth, Texas on November 22, 1963.
President Kennedy's Civil Rights Address, June 11, 1963.
Kennedy with leaders of the March on Washington, August 28, 1963.
The Kennedy brothers: Attorney GeneralRobert F. Kennedy, Senator Ted Kennedy, and President John F. Kennedy in 1963
Jack and Jackie Kennedy on their wedding day, surrounded by relatives
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
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John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), commonly known as "Jack" or by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from January 1961 until he was assassinated in November 1963.
After military service as commander of Motor Torpedo Boats PT-109 and PT-59 during World War II in the South Pacific, Kennedy represented Massachusetts' 11th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953 as a Democrat. Thereafter, he served in the U.S. Senate from 1953 until 1960. Kennedy defeated Vice President and Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. presidential election. At age 43, he was the youngest to have been elected to the office,[2][a] the second-youngest president (after Theodore Roosevelt), and the first person born in the 20th century to serve as president.[3] To date, Kennedy has been the only Catholic president and the only president to have won a Pulitzer Prize.[4]
Events during his presidency included the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Space Race—by initiating Project Apollo (which would culminate in the moon landing), the building of the Berlin Wall, the African-American Civil Rights Movement, and increased U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald was accused of the crime and arrested that evening. However, Jack Rubyshot and killed Oswald two days later, before a trial could take place. The FBI and the Warren Commission officially concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin. The United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that those investigations were flawed and that Kennedy was probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy.[5]
Since the 1960s, information concerning Kennedy's private life has come to light. Details of Kennedy's health problems with which he struggled have become better known, especially since the 1990s. Although initially kept secret from the general public, reports of Kennedy being unfaithful in marriage have garnered much press. Kennedy ranks highly in public opinion ratings of U.S. presidents.[6]
Military service (1941–45)
Main article: Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109
Congressional career
House of Representatives (1946–52)
Senate (1952–60)
1960 presidential election
Main article: United States presidential election, 1960
John F. Kennedy takes the oath of officeadministered by Chief Justice Earl Warren on January 20, 1961, at the Capitol
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 ...
It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency. - JFK, 1962
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 ...It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency. - JFK, 1962
Foreign policy
Main article: Foreign policy of the John F. Kennedy administration
Persian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Kennedy, and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in the White House Cabinet Room on April 13, 1962.Cuba and the Bay of Pigs Invasion
Main article: Bay of Pigs Invasion
Pres. Kennedy and Vice Pres. Johnson.Cuban Missile Crisis
Meeting Nikita Khrushchev in 1961. Latin America and communism
Main article: Kennedy and Latin America
Peace Corps
John F. Kennedy's announcement of the establishment of the Peace Corps
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As one of his first presidential acts, Kennedy asked Congress to create the Peace Corps. His brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, was the first director.[92] Through this program, Americans volunteer to help underdeveloped nations in areas such as education, farming, health care, and construction. The organization grew to 5,000 members by March 1963 and 10,000 the following year.[93] Since 1961, over 200,000 Americans have joined the Peace Corps, serving in 139 countries.[94][95]
Southeast Asia
Main articles: 1963 South Vietnamese coup, Arrest and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, Reaction to the 1963 South Vietnamese coup, Cable 243, Buddhist crisis, Thích Quảng Đức, Xá Lợi Pagoda raids, Krulak Mendenhall mission, and McNamara Taylor mission
Kennedy with future Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt in the Oval Office in 1963.American University speech
Kennedy delivers thecommencement speech atAmerican University, June 10, 1963 West Berlin speech
Kennedy delivering his speech in West Berlin  |
Ich bin ein Berliner speech from the Rathaus Schöneberg by John F. Kennedy, June 26, 1963 (duration 9:01)
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Israel
Iraq
Main article: Ramadan Revolution
In 1963, the Kennedy administration backed the coup against the government of Iraq headed by Abd al-Karim Qasim, who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy.[152] On February 8, 1963, Kennedy received a memo stating: "We will make informal friendly noises as soon as we can find out whom to talk with, and ought to recognize as soon as we're sure these guys are firmly in the saddle. CIA had excellent reports on the plotting, but I doubt either they or UK should claim much credit for it."[153] The CIA had planned to remove Qasim in the past, but those efforts did not come to fruition.[154]
The new government, led by President Abdul Salam Arif and dominated by the Ba'ath Party (along with a coalition of Nasserists and Iraqi nationalists), used lists—possibly provided by the CIA—of suspected communists and other leftists to systematically murder unknown numbers of Iraq's educated elite.[155][156] After a power struggle with the Ba'athist Prime Minister, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Arif purged the Ba'ath Party from the government.[157] Former CIA officer James Chritchfield disputed the notion that the CIA offered "active support" to the coup plotters, arguing that while "well-informed" on the first coup, it was "surprised" by the power struggles that followed.[158]
Ireland
John F. Kennedy visiting the John Barry Memorial at Crescent Quay in Wexford, Ireland.President Kennedy in motorcade in Patrick Street, Cork, in Ireland on June 28, 1963. Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
Main article: Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
Troubled by the long-term dangers of radioactive contamination and nuclear weapons proliferation, Kennedy and Khrushchev agreed to negotiate a nuclear test ban treaty, originally conceived in Adlai Stevenson's 1956 presidential campaign.[164] In their Vienna summit meeting in June 1961, Khrushchev and Kennedy reached an informal understanding against nuclear testing, but the Soviet Union began testing nuclear weapons that September. The United States responded by conducting tests five days later.[165] Shortly thereafter, new U.S. satellites began delivering images which made it clear that the Soviets were substantially behind the U.S. in the arms race.[166] Nevertheless, the greater nuclear strength of the U.S. was of little value as long as the U.S.S.R. perceived themselves to be at parity.[167]
In July 1963, Kennedy sent Averell Harriman to Moscow to negotiate a treaty with the Soviets.[168] The introductory sessions included Khrushchev, who later delegated Soviet representation to Andrei Gromyko. It quickly became clear that a comprehensive test ban would not be implemented, due largely to the reluctance of the Soviets to allow inspections that would verify compliance.[169]
Ultimately, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union were the initial signatories to a limited treaty, which prohibited atomic testing on the ground, in the atmosphere, or underwater, but not underground. The U.S. Senate ratified this and Kennedy signed it into law in October 1963. France was quick to declare that it was free to continue developing and testing its nuclear defenses.[170]
Domestic policy
President Kennedy in Fort Worth, Texas on November 22, 1963. Economy
Kennedy ended a period of tight fiscal policies, loosening monetary policy to keep interest rates down and encourage growth of the economy.[175] He presided over the first government budget to top the $100 billion mark, in 1962, and his first budget in 1961 led to the country's first non-war, non-recession deficit.[176]The economy, which had been through two recessions in three years and was in one when Kennedy took office, accelerated notably during his presidency. Despite low inflation and interest rates, GDP had grown by an average of only 2.2% per annum during the Eisenhower presidency (scarcely more than population growth at the time), and had declined by 1% during Eisenhower's last twelve months in office.[177]
The economy turned around and prospered during the Kennedy administration. GDP expanded by an average of 5.5% from early 1961 to late 1963,[177] while inflation remained steady at around 1% and unemployment eased.[178] Industrial production rose by 15% and motor vehicle sales rose by 40%.[179] This rate of growth in GDP and industry continued until around 1969, and has yet to be repeated for such a sustained period of time.[177]
The major steel companies announced in April 1962 a 3.5% price increase (the first in 3 years) within a day of each other. This came just days after the companies had reached a settlement with the steelworkers' union, providing in chief a wage increase of 2.5%. The administration was furious, with Kennedy saying, "Why did they do this? Do they think they can get away with this? God, I hate the bastards."[citation needed] Amid concern about the inflationary effects of the price increase[citation needed], the president took personal charge of a campaign against the industry, assigning to each cabinet member a statement regarding the effects of the price increase on their area. Robert Kennedy, echoing his brother's sentiments, said "We're going for broke ... their expense accounts, where they've been and what they've been doing ... the FBI is to interview them all ... we can't lose this."[180]
Robert took the position that the steel executives had illegally colluded to fix prices. The administration's actions influenced U.S. Steel to rescind the price increase.[181] The Wall Street Journal wrote that the administration had acted "by naked power, by threats, by agents of the state security police."[182] Yale law professor Charles Reich opined in The New Republic that the administration had violated civil liberties by calling a grand jury to indict U.S. Steel for collusion so quickly.[182]
A New York Times editorial praised Kennedy's actions and said that the steel industry's price increase "imperils the economic welfare of the country by inviting a tidal wave of inflation."[183] Nevertheless, the administration's Bureau of Budget reported the price increase would have resulted in a net gain for GDP as well as a net budget surplus.[184] The stock market, which had steadily declined since Kennedy's election, dropped 10% shortly after the administration's action on the steel industry.[185]
Federal and military death penalty
As President, Kennedy oversaw the last federal execution prior to Furman v. Georgia, a 1972 case that led to a moratorium on federal executions.[186] Victor Feguer was sentenced to death by a federal court in Iowa and was executed on March 15, 1963.[187] Kennedy commuted a death sentence imposed by a military court on seaman Jimmie Henderson on February 12, 1962, changing the penalty to life in prison.[188]
On March 22, 1962, Kennedy signed into law HR5143 (PL87-423), abolishing the mandatory death penalty for first degree murder in the District of Columbia, the only remaining jurisdiction in the United States with such a penalty.[189] The death penalty has not been applied in the District of Columbia since 1957, and has now been abolished.[190]
Civil rights
President Kennedy's Civil Rights Address, June 11, 1963. Kennedy with leaders of the March on Washington, August 28, 1963. Civil liberties
In 1963, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who hated civil-rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and viewed him as an upstart troublemaker,[214] presented the Kennedy Administration with allegations that some of King's close confidants and advisers were communists. Concerned that the allegations, if made public, would derail the Administration's civil rights initiatives, Robert Kennedy and the president both warned King to discontinue the suspect associations. After the associations continued, Robert Kennedy felt compelled to issue a written directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap King and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King's civil rights organization.[215]
Although Kennedy only gave written approval for limited wiretapping of King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so",[216] Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy.[217] The wiretapping continued through June 1966 and was revealed in 1968.[218]
Immigration
John F. Kennedy initially proposed an overhaul of American immigration policy that later was to become the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, sponsored by Kennedy's brother Senator Edward Kennedy. It dramatically shifted the source of immigration from Northern and Western European countries towards immigration from Latin America and Asia. The policy change also shifted the emphasis in the selection of immigrants in favor of family reunification.[219] Kennedy wanted to dismantle the selection of immigrants based on country of origin and saw this as an extension of his civil rights policies.[220]
Native American relations
Further information: Kinzua Dam#Native Americans and Seneca nation#Kinzua Dam
Construction of the Kinzua Dam flooded 10,000 acres (4,047 ha) of Seneca nation land that they had occupied under the Treaty of 1794, and forced 600 Seneca to relocate to Salamanca, New York. Kennedy was asked by the American Civil Liberties Union to intervene and halt the project, but he declined, citing a critical need for flood control. He expressed concern about the plight of the Seneca, and directed government agencies to assist in obtaining more land, damages, and assistance to help mitigate their displacement.[221][222]
Kennedy proposing a program to land men on the Moon to Congress in May 1961.
Kennedy speaks at Rice University, September 12, 1962 (duration 17:47)
John, Jackie, and the Connallys in the presidential limousine seconds before the assassination.
President Kennedy's family leaving hisfuneral at the U.S. Capitol Building
The Kennedy family in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, in 1963.
Jacqueline Kennedy in Fort Worth, Texas, on November 22, 1963
Space policy
Further information: Space Race and Space policy of the United States
Kennedy proposing a program to land men on the Moon to Congress in May 1961. 
Assassination
Main article: Assassination of John F. Kennedy
John, Jackie, and the Connallys in the presidential limousine seconds before the assassination. Funeral
Main article: State funeral of John F. Kennedy
President Kennedy's family leaving hisfuneral at the U.S. Capitol Building Administration, Cabinet, and judicial appointments 1961–63
| The Kennedy Cabinet | ||
|---|---|---|
| Office | Name | Term |
| President | John F. Kennedy | 1961–1963 |
| Vice President | Lyndon B. Johnson | 1961–1963 |
| Secretary of State | Dean Rusk | 1961–1963 |
| Secretary of Treasury | C. Douglas Dillon | 1961–1963 |
| Secretary of Defense | Robert McNamara | 1961–1963 |
| Attorney General | Robert F. Kennedy | 1961–1963 |
| Postmaster General | J. Edward Day | 1961–1963 |
| John A. Gronouski | 1963 | |
| Secretary of the Interior | Stewart Udall | 1961–1963 |
| Secretary of Agriculture | Orville Freeman | 1961–1963 |
| Secretary of Commerce | Luther H. Hodges | 1961–1963 |
| Secretary of Labor | Arthur Goldberg | 1961–1962 |
| W. Willard Wirtz | 1962–1963 | |
| Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare | Abraham A. Ribicoff | 1961–1962 |
| Anthony J. Celebrezze | 1962–1963 | |
Judicial appointments
Supreme Court
Main article: John F. Kennedy Supreme Court candidates
Further information: List of nominations to the Supreme Court of the United States
Kennedy appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:
- Byron White – 1962
- Arthur Goldberg – 1962
Other courts
Main article: List of federal judges appointed by John F. Kennedy
In addition to his two Supreme Court appointments, Kennedy appointed 21 judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, and 102 judges to the United States district courts.
Image, social life and family
Further information: Kennedy family
The Kennedy family in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, in 1963. "Camelot Era"
Jacqueline Kennedy in Fort Worth, Texas, on November 22, 1963 The Kennedy brothers: Attorney GeneralRobert F. Kennedy, Senator Ted Kennedy, and President John F. Kennedy in 1963 Jack and Jackie Kennedy on their wedding day, surrounded by relatives 
Health
Years after Kennedy's death, it was revealed that in September 1947, while Kennedy was 30 and in his first term in Congress, he was diagnosed by Sir Daniel Davis at The London Clinic with Addison's disease, a rare endocrine disorder. In 1966, his White House doctor, Janet Travell, revealed that Kennedy also hadhypothyroidism. The presence of two endocrine diseases raises the possibility that Kennedy had autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type 2 (APS 2).[255]
Kennedy also suffered from chronic and severe back pain, for which he had surgery and was written up in the American Medical Association's Archives of Surgery. Kennedy's condition may have had diplomatic repercussions, as he appears to have been taking a combination of drugs to treat severe back pain during the 1961Vienna Summit with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The combination included hormones, animal organ cells, steroids, vitamins, enzymes, and amphetamines, and possible potential side effects included hyperactivity, hypertension, impaired judgment, nervousness, and mood swings.[256] Kennedy at one time was regularly seen by no fewer than three doctors, one of whom, Max Jacobson, was unknown to the other two, as his mode of treatment was controversial[257] and used for the most severe bouts of back pain.[258]
There were disagreements among his doctors, into late 1961, over the proper balance of medication and exercise, with the president preferring the former as he was short on time and desired immediate relief.[167] During that timeframe the president's physician, George Burkley, did set up some gym equipment in the White House basement where Kennedy did stretching exercises for his back three times a week.[259] Details of these and other medical problems were not publicly disclosed during Kennedy's lifetime.[260]
Personal tragedies
Behind the glamour, the Kennedys experienced many personal tragedies. Jackie had a miscarriage in 1955 and a stillbirth in 1956. A son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, died shortly after birth in August 1963. They had two children who survived infancy. One of the fundamental aspects of the Kennedy family is a tragic strain which has run through the family, due to the violent and untimely deaths of many of its members.
Jack's elder brother, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., died in World War II at the age of 29. It was Joe Jr. who was originally to carry the family's hopes for the Presidency. Then both Jack himself, and his brother Bobby died due to assassinations. Ted had brushes with death, the first in a plane crash in 1964 and the second due to a car accident in 1969 known as the Chappaquiddick incident. Ted died at age 77, on August 25, 2009, from the effects of a malignant brain tumor.
Caroline Bouvier Kennedy was born in 1957 and is the only surviving member of JFK's immediate family. John F. Kennedy, Jr., was born in 1960, just a few weeks after his father was elected. John Jr. died in 1999, when the small plane he was piloting crashed en route to Martha's Vineyard, killing him, his wife, Carolyn Bessette, and his sister-in-law.[261]
Extramarital relationships
As a young single man in the 1940s, Kennedy had affairs with Danish journalist Inga Arvad,[262] and actress Gene Tierney.[263] Later in life, Kennedy reportedly had affairs with a number of women, including Marilyn Monroe,[264] Gunilla von Post,[265] Judith Campbell,[266] Mary Pinchot Meyer,[267] Marlene Dietrich,[268] Mimi Alford,[269] and Jackie's press secretary Pamela Turnure.[270]
The extent of a relationship with Monroe will never be known, although it has been reported they spent a weekend together in March 1962 while Kennedy was staying at Bing Crosby's house.[271] Furthermore, the White House switchboard noted calls from her during 1962.[272] J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director, received reports as to Kennedy's indiscretions.[273]
Kennedy inspired affection and loyalty from the members of his team and his supporters.[274] According to Reeves, this included "the logistics of Kennedy's liaisons...[which] required secrecy and devotion rare in the annals of the energetic service demanded by successful politicians".[275] Kennedy believed that his friendly relationship with members of the press would help protect him from revelations about his sex life.[276]
Ancestry
The Kennedy family originally came from Dunganstown, County Wexford, Ireland.[277] In 1848, Patrick Kennedy (1823–1858) left his farm and boarded a ship in New Ross bound for Liverpool on his way to Boston.[278] It was here he met the woman he was to marry, Bridget Murphy (c.1824–1888).[279]
Patrick came to Boston and took a job as a migrant worker. He died within eight or nine years of cholera.[280] They had three daughters and two sons (the elder son died young from cholera). He left behind a widow and four children to carry on, the youngest being Patrick Joseph Kennedy.
Legacy
Television became the primary source by which people were kept informed of events surrounding John F. Kennedy's assassination. In fact, television started to come of age before the assassination. On September 2, 1963, Kennedy helped inaugurate network television's first half hour nightly evening newscast according to an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite.[281]
Newspapers were kept as souvenirs rather than sources of updated information. In this sense it was the first major "TV news event" of its kind, the TV coverage uniting the nation, interpreting what went on and creating memories of this space in time. All three major U.S. television networks suspended their regular schedules and switched to all-news coverage from November 22 through November 25, 1963, being on the air for 70 hours, making it the longest uninterrupted news event on American TV until 9/11.[282]
Kennedy's state funeral procession and the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald were all broadcast live in America and in other places around the world. The state funeral was the first of three in a span of 12 months. The other two were for General Douglas MacArthur and President Herbert Clark Hoover. All three have two things in common: the commanding general of the Military District of Washington during those funerals was Army Major General Philip C. Wehle and the riderless horse was Black Jack, who also served in that role during Lyndon B. Johnson's funeral.
The assassination had an effect on many people, not only in the U.S. but around the world. Many vividly remember where they were when first learning of the news that Kennedy was assassinated, as with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, before it and the September 11 attacks after it. UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson said of the assassination: "all of us..... will bear the grief of his death until the day of ours." Many people have also spoken of the shocking news, compounded by the pall of uncertainty about the identity of the assassin(s), the possible instigators and the causes of the killing as an end to innocence, and in retrospect it has been coalesced with other changes of the tumultuous decade of the 1960s, especially the Vietnam War.
The US Special Forces had a special bond with Kennedy. "It was President Kennedy who was responsible for the rebuilding of the Special Forces and giving us back our Green Beret," said Forrest Lindley, a writer for the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes who served with Special Forces in Vietnam.[c] This bond was shown at JFK's funeral. At the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of JFK's death, Gen. Michael D. Healy, the last commander of Special Forces in Vietnam, spoke at Arlington Cemetery. Later, a wreath in the form of the Green Beret would be placed on the grave, continuing a tradition that began the day of his funeral when a sergeant in charge of a detail of Special Forces men guarding the grave placed his beret on the coffin.
Kennedy was the first of six Presidents to have served in the U.S. Navy,[283] and one of the enduring legacies of his administration was the creation in 1961 of another special forces command, the Navy SEALs,[284] which Kennedy enthusiastically supported.[285]
Ultimately, the death of President Kennedy and the ensuing confusion surrounding the facts of his assassination are of political and historical importance insofar as they marked a turning point and decline in the faith of the American people in the political establishment—a point made by commentators from Gore Vidal to Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and implied by Oliver Stone in several of his films, such as his landmark 1991 JFK.
Although President Kennedy opposed segregation and had shown support for the civil rights of African Americans, he originally believed in a more measured approach to legislation given the political realities he faced in Congress, especially with the Southern Conservatives.[286] However, impelled by the civil rights demonstrations of Martin Luther King, Kennedy in 1963 proposed legislative action. In a radio and TV address to the nation in June 1963—a century after President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation—Kennedy became the first president to call on all Americans to denounce racism as morally wrong. Kennedy's civil rights proposals led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.[287]
President Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy's successor, took up the mantle and pushed the landmark Civil Rights Act through a bitterly divided Congress by invoking the slain president's memory.[288][289]President Johnson then signed the Act into law on July 2, 1964. This civil rights law ended what was known as the "Solid South" and certain provisions were modeled after the Civil Rights Act of 1875, signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant.[290]
Kennedy's continuation of Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower's policies of giving economic and military aid to South Vietnam left the door open for President Johnson's escalation of the conflict.[291] At the time of Kennedy's death, no final policy decision had been made as to Vietnam, leading historians, cabinet members and writers to continue to disagree on whether the Vietnam conflict would have escalated to the point it did had he survived.[292][132] However, his agreeing to the NSAM 263[128] action in withdrawing 1,000 troops by the end of 1963, and his earlier 1963 speech at American University,[130] gives an idea he was ready to end the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War contributed greatly to a decade of national difficulties, amid violent disappointment on the political landscape.
Many of Kennedy's speeches (especially his inaugural address) are considered iconic; and despite his relatively short term in office and lack of major legislative changes coming to fruition during his term, Americans regularly vote him as one of the best presidents, in the same league as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Some excerpts of Kennedy's inaugural address are engraved on a plaque at his grave at Arlington.
He was posthumously awarded the Pacem in Terris Award. It was named after a 1963 encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of goodwill to secure peace among all nations. Pacem in Terris is Latin for 'Peace on Earth.'
President Kennedy is the only president to have predeceased both his mother and father. He is also the only president to have predeceased a grandparent. His grandmother, Mary Josephine Hannon Fitzgerald, died in 1964, just over eight months after his assassination.
Throughout the English-speaking world, the given name Kennedy has sometimes been used in honor of President Kennedy, as well his brother Robert.[293]
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