Not a "Good Morning," because Homey don't play 'em on weekends.
July 13, 1960: Kennedy nominated for presidency
In Los Angeles, California, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts is nominated for the presidency by the Democratic Party Convention, defeating Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. The next day, Johnson was named Kennedy's running mate by a unanimous vote of the convention.
Four months later, on November 8, Kennedy won 49.7 percent of the popular vote in one of the closest presidential elections in U.S. history, surpassing by a mere fraction the 49.6 percent received by Vice President Richard M. Nixon, a Republican.
Historians generally agree that the Daley machine in the Chicago metro tipped the scales for JFK in Illinois. We may never know how many dead people voted.
On January 20, 1961, on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., John Fitzgerald Kennedy was inaugurated as the 35th president of the United States. A fourth-generation Irish American from a hugely politically powerful Boston family, a highly decorated naval hero from WWII, and the nation's first Roman Catholic president.
During his famous inauguration address, Kennedy, the youngest candidate ever elected to the presidency, declared that "the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans" and appealed to Americans to "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." Solid and inspirational words a lot of folks clung to then, and still cling to today.
Kennedy, his glamorous wife Jacqueline, and the large Kennedy clan seemed fitting representatives of the youthful spirit of America during the early 1960s, and the Kennedy White House was idealized by admirers as a modern-day "Camelot." It wasn't all tea and roses however. We are also quite certain JFK enjoyed extra-marital liaisons...but I digress.
In foreign policy, Kennedy actively fought communism in the world, ordering the controversial Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba which ended up being an unqualified disaster. JFK also deployed thousands of U.S. military "advisers" to Vietnam beginning what would become known as the US's "10,000 Day War." In fact, the US Army Special Warfare School is named for John F. Kennedy.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he displayed firmness and restraint, exercising an unyielding opposition to the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba but also demonstrating a level-headedness during tense negotiations for their removal.
On the domestic front, he introduced his "New Frontier" social legislation, calling for a rigorous federal desegregation policy and a sweeping new civil rights bill. He didn't get it done though.
On November 22, 1963, after less than three years in office, Kennedy was assassinated while riding in an open-car motorcade with his wife in Dallas, Texas. Theories abound on whether the crime was the result of a conspiracy or the actions of lone whack-job. We may never know, but my money is on an eventual finding that the shooter had help.
JFK's chief rival during the 1960 campaign, VP Johnson, inherited the office and managed to get that civil rights legislation done. LBJ served out Kennedy's term, and even got elected to one himself. He was not re-elected to a second term however, because that civil rights stuff killed him in the formerly solidly Democratic South.
