American Experience (1988–…): Season 26, Episode 2 - JFK: Part 1 - full transcript

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Someone needs to stop Clearway Law.
Public shouldn't leave reviews for lawyers.

Only a few people knew
of the existence

of the surveillance photographs,

much less the terrifying
revelations they held.

In October 1962,
the Soviet Union

was constructing
nuclear launch sites in Cuba



within range of every major city
on the Eastern Seaboard,

including the U.S. capital.

It's hard to realize
how frightened they were.

They had conversations
about evacuating

great parts
of the United States.

They had estimates

about how many tens of millions
of people would die.

They really thought
that war was near.

Managing this crisis fell
to a rookie president:

John F. Kennedy.

He was less than two years
on the job,

the youngest man
ever elected to the office.

Nothing prepared him for this.

The things that
got him elected...



The acute politician,
the charming vote getter,

the money, the glamour...

None of it had any bearing
at all on his situation.

The qualities that had carried
John Kennedy to the presidency...

Natural rebelliousness,
stubborn self-reliance,

spectacular self-confidence...

Had also led him to make
mistakes and missteps

that helped put the country
in mortal danger.

His predecessor in the
White House, Dwight Eisenhower,

had called him "Little Boy Blue"

and thought his wealthy father
had bought him the office.

The Soviet premier,
Nikita Khrushchev,

had taken Kennedy's measure

at their first meeting
a year earlier,

and he walked away believing
he could get the better

of the untested president.

If John F. Kennedy
doubted himself

or quailed at the enormity
of the situation,

he didn't show it.

He had a very great ability

to step back, to be cool,
to be detached,

to not get sucked in
by the passions of the moment,

to not just ride the wave.

When he became angry,
he tended to become very calm.

There was a kind of burning
anger in him

that he didn't express
very openly.

This man was fiercely
independent,

intellectually independent.

Fiercely.

Kennedy had an unshakable sense
of his own skills.

He was confident
about his ability

to come up
with the right answer.

He wasn't bringing people
together in a room

to hammer out a consensus.

He was bringing people in a room
to give him the best information

so that he could
make the decision.

He had what he called the "great
man" theory of governing.

As a consequence,
it put a lot of pressure on him.

Now, at a moment of peril
and uncertainty,

he would be forced
to answer the question

that had dogged him
his entire career:

Was he as tough, as smart,
as capable as he appeared?

Good evening,
my fellow citizens.

Within the past week,

unmistakable evidence
has established the fact

that a series of offensive
missile sites

are now in preparation
on that imprisoned island...

Mrs. Lincoln?

Is this tape in?
Is this plugged in?

Is this plugged in?

One, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

I was the descendant
of three generations

on both sides of my family

of, uh, men who had followed,
uh, the political profession.

In my early life, uh, comma,

the conversation was nearly
always about politics.

Period.

By the time he came of age,
John Fitzgerald Kennedy

inhabited a world
of special exemption:

the family estate
in suburban New York,

the summer compound
in Hyannisport,

the winter retreat
in Palm Beach.

The story of his family's heroic
multigenerational rise

from the want of Irish famine

might well have been
a misty old folktale.

The past was not the point
in the Kennedy household.

Jack's father,
Joseph P. Kennedy,

was one of the wealthiest men
in America,

an Irish Catholic businessman
who had grabbed his fortune

in the WASP-dominated world
of high finance

and then became
a celebrated administrator

in President Franklin
Roosevelt's momentous

New Deal government.

Joe Kennedy expected his sons
in particular

to have a large effect
on the world.

He's a model of what
they're taught to emulate.

He's striving, he's reaching,

he's always on the move,
he's accomplishing,

and it was expected of them
to do the same thing.

They were very pampered
and enabled.

They were made to feel special,
which is good,

and they were special,

and they were made to feel
obliged to serve their country.

That was great.

But they were also given
a kind of confidence

that it would always
go well for them.

After the stock market crash
occurred in 1929,

John Kennedy didn't know that

there was all this privation
in the country.

He never wanted for a meal.

And it wasn't until he read
something later

in high school and college
about the Depression

that it registered
on his consciousness.

Even in the raucous
Kennedy clan...

Even among his eight brothers
and sisters...

Jack stood out.

He kept his own schedule...
Usually late.

He was apt to test the patience
of his elders,

unconcerned with rules
and loose with money.

He plied shopkeepers
with the promise

that his father would pay
the bill, whatever it was.

Jack would expect maids
to take care of him,

cook his meals, do his laundry,
pick up his clothes.

And so he has a very privileged
childhood, except for one thing:

that he is burdened by a series
of considerable health problems.

Jack almost died
of scarlet fever in 1920,

just before his third birthday.

Two years later,
a case of whooping cough

landed him in another
quarantine ward.

Soon after his parents
shipped him off

to a prestigious boarding school
in Connecticut,

Jack's letters home
began to include reports

of his shaky health.

At Choate, Jack's ongoing
digestive ailments

made him a reliable customer
of the campus infirmary.

Jack didn't know
what was wrong with him.

All he knew was that
on a regular basis,

he would take sick,
get a high fever,

end up in the hospital,
that he couldn't gain weight,

that he couldn't run around

and play sports
the way he wanted to.

He was terribly thin.

He had recurrent bouts
of nausea and vomiting,

continual bouts of high fever,
and he was tired all the time.

Joe Sr. worried that Jack
might take on the image

of someone who lacked
the physical strength

to achieve great things in life.

By the time he was 17 years old,
his health was so questionable

they sent him off to the Mayo
Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota,

to try and figure out
what his problems were.

Test results at Mayo indicated
that Jack suffered

from an intestinal inflammation
called colitis.

But the doctors warned him
that he might have hepatitis,

or worse, leukemia.

When his blood count dropped
to near-fatal readings,

he made light.

"They call me
'2000 to go Kennedy,""

he wrote a friend.

"Took a peek at my chart
yesterday and could see

that they were mentally
measuring me for a coffin."

He never stops joking
and laughing,

even in the worst circumstances.

When the wife of his headmaster
at Choate comes,

she says, "Jack never stopped
kidding around with me

the whole time I was there."

He had to become very stoic,

and at the same time he had
to project an image of vitality.

So although he was feeling
poorly a lot of the time,

he couldn't let on
that he was feeling poorly.

Joe Sr. refused to lower
expectations for his second son,

whatever his illness.

"Don't let me lose confidence
in you again," Joe wrote to Jack

after a less-than-sterling
report

from the headmaster at Choate,

"because it will be nearly an
impossible task to restore it."

Joe Kennedy, Sr. drives this
point home to his sons.

Joe Kennedy's message to them is

second is never good enough.

Only first.

Only winning.

Only being at the top.

Joe Jr. was picked out...

"You're going to be president"...

And Joe was determined
to please Dad

and was going to do
whatever Dad wanted.

He was a familiar type:
student body president,

captain of teams, best-looking
boy, destined for success.

Jack was one step away.

Yes, he wanted to please Dad,

but he might think about it
for a second.

And there stirred in him
a little quiet,

and maybe even more than quiet,
rebellion.

The problem with Jack,
at least for his father,

is he doesn't take
anything seriously.

Nothing.

At Choate,

where there is a strict
prep school behavioral code,

where the last thing you do
is snicker

or make fun of your teachers
or talk behind their backs,

Jack just can't help himself.

The more pompous the headmaster,

the more ridiculous the speeches
at chapel,

the more he feels
absolutely compelled

not only to make fun himself,

but to draw his circle
of friends in.

When he organizes a prank,
all the other boys are in.

Jack Kennedy was a capable
student in the courses he liked,

indifferent to those he didn't.

His acquaintance with the rules
of spelling and grammar

appeared fleeting.

He spent much of his depleted
energy on campus high jinks

or romance.

Even in high school,

his roster of conquests
was a source of wonderment.

"It can't be my good looks,"
he wrote to a Choate friend,

"because I'm not much handsomer
than anybody else.

It must be my personality."

When Jack announced his decision

to join his prep-school friends
at Princeton

instead of following Joe Jr.
To Harvard,

his father made
his disappointment known:

"You want to get away
from your brother, I take it.

Too much competition."

Fall term 1936,
Jack enrolled at Harvard.

The Kennedys were
a loving family,

but bitterly competitive.

This comes from the father, but
it becomes entrenched with them.

They were always putting
each other down:

verbally, games, sailing,
touch football,

nonstop competition.

And a lot of it's joyous,

but there's an edge there too,
almost a meanness.

Where Joe Jr. and Jack were
concerned, friends remembered,

"Everything was a contest,
whether a swim in the pool

or a race
to the breakfast table."

Jack was always smaller, punier.

He never gave up,
and he always got beat up.

It was par for the course.

Jack would indulge in these
sort of hit-and-run attacks.

And it would frustrate Joe Jr.,
who would dash after him.

But Jack was fast, and Joe
wouldn't necessarily catch him.

And so Jack learned how
to compete in an effective way

in a world where he wasn't
always the biggest,

the strongest, the smartest.

Bye, Rosie.

Bye, Jack.

At the end of Jack's
sophomore year at Harvard,

Joe Kennedy took a new job
in London

as ambassador to America's
most important ally.

Jack trailed his father across
the Atlantic a few months later

for a summer's work
in his father's new office.

When Joe Kennedy, Sr.

Became ambassador
to Great Britain in 1938,

it opened up a world for Jack

which he had not
quite glimpsed before.

There was his father at the
center of British social life,

and it allowed Jack
to make intellectual

as well as social contacts

with the most important people
in Great Britain,

and to engage in conversation
and intellectual exchange,

which stimulated him greatly.

These were the roots
of his interest

in international affairs.

Jack had a front row seat
that summer

in the most consequential season
of international gamesmanship

in a generation.

The German leader, Adolf Hitler,

had spent the previous
five years

building the most powerful
military Europe had ever seen,

and in 1938,

he was showing signs
he might use it.

Hitler had already
frightened Austria

into accepting annexation,

and he was menacing
Czechoslovakia and Poland.

The rest of Europe,
and America too,

was trying to figure out how
to handle the German threat.

Joe Sr. knew what was at stake

for his country,
and for himself.

There was talk
among serious Democrats

that Joe Kennedy was in line
for the presidency

if Franklin Roosevelt decided
not to run in 1940.

The ambassador never stopped
talking politics and policy,

even when the workday was over,

at the family's
temporary residence,

14 Princes Gate,
Westminster, London.

Joe Sr. loved to encourage
spirited debate

among his children,
particularly at mealtime.

One of his friends said

that she liked to watch what
happened at the dinner table.

It was sort of like Joe
would drop a depth charge

and wait for something
to explode.

There was a lot of conversation
about France and England

and what was going to happen
with England,

what would happen with America,
and would we enter the war.

Joseph P. Kennedy was convinced

that if the United States
was drawn into a war in Europe

that it would ruin the economy.

Democracy would be lost.

The millions of dollars
he had put aside for his boys

would be lost, the America he
knew and loved would be lost,

and it wasn't worth it.

Europe was Europe.

It was an ocean away.

And he figured anything
was better

than going to war with Hitler.

So why not try to make a deal
with Hitler?

Jack Kennedy listened
to his father

and he sat and argued with his
father at the dinner table

about economics
and world affairs.

Jack was back at Harvard
in the fall of 1938.

He monitored from afar the
international summit in Munich,

where British Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain

struck a deal

to cede a small piece
of Czechoslovakia to Germany

in exchange for a promise
from Hitler

that he would stop there.

He also saw his father
congratulating Chamberlain

for keeping the peace.

When asked by the newspapermen
this afternoon

what I thought the chances were
of appeasement succeeding,

I told them
I wasn't sure at all,

but it was certainly
worthwhile trying.

Jack asked permission

to spend the next semester
back in Europe

so he could gather material
for a senior thesis.

U.S. embassies and consulates

would be obliged to welcome
Joe Kennedy's boy.

He was back at his parents' home
in London by March 1939,

right around the time Hitler
broke his promise to Chamberlain

and seized the rest
of Czechoslovakia.

Jack headed straight
for the Continent and beyond

to see for himself
what was happening.

He questions people.

He talks.

He listens.

He reads the headlines.

He hangs out in the consulates.

He tries to talk
to the diplomats

in each of these countries,

and to the newsmen,
the journalists.

Jack got as near the action
as he could get:

the border between Germany
and Poland,

where Hitler's powerful
war machine

appeared to be massing
for attack.

He was safely back at his
father's embassy in London

on September 1, when German
soldiers crossed into Poland

and German planes
began bombing cities,

killing innocent civilians.

Britain was bound by treaty
to defend its ally, Poland,

and Jack was at the House
of Commons to hear the war talk.

He was on the streets, watching,
as England prepared for war

and he listened in on Prime
Minister Chamberlain's address

to a nervous nation.

You can imagine what
a bitter blow it is to me

that all my long struggle
to win peace has failed.

Yet I cannot believe
that there is anything more

or anything different
that I could have done...

Chamberlain's weakness...
his dispirited call to arms...

Was something Jack Kennedy
would never forget.

The onset of war did offer Jack
his first shot at public service

and at public attention.

When a German U-boat sank
a British passenger liner

with more than 300 Americans
on board,

Ambassador Kennedy sent
22-year-old Jack

to reassure the survivors

that the embassy would
get them safely home.

"Mr. Kennedy,"
wrote a British newspaperman,

"displayed a wisdom and sympathy
of a man twice his years."

He arrived for his final year at
Harvard with a self-confidence

that surprised his professors,
and a new sense of purpose.

He spent his last semester
grinding away

at his honors thesis,
"Appeasement at Munich."

Jack's thesis cut against
prevailing public sentiment,

which held that British Prime
Minister Chamberlain's actions

at Munich had been dishonorable,
even cowardly.

Chamberlain's appeasement
of Hitler, he argued,

had been understandable.

Britain had been so lax

in building its military
in the previous decade

that the prime minister
had little choice

but to go to the negotiating
table and buy time.

The 150-page paper
got mixed reviews.

His professors found it "wordy"
and "repetitious."

But they had to admit
it was an intelligent discussion

of complacency
in pre-war Britain.

Joe Sr. was impressed enough to
help get the thesis published.

By the time John Kennedy
graduated Harvard

in June of 1940, his first book,
Why England Slept,

was on its way
to the reading public.

He hustled hard promoting
his book and his big idea:

Democracies had to be armed
and ready to fight at all times,

he said,
the United States included.

Good evening,
ladies and gentlemen.

At this time,
we're indeed pleased

to have with us in our studios
Mr. John F. Kennedy.

This young man has
a clear-headed, realistic,

unhysterical message for his
countrymen and for his elders.

We must realize that we must
always keep our armaments

equal to our commitments.

We cannot tell anyone
to keep out of our hemisphere

unless our armaments and the
people behind these armaments

are prepared to back up
the command

even to the ultimate point
of going to war.

The book was timely;

Americans were beginning
to wonder

if Hitler's military
could reach the United States.

Why England Slept
became a surprise best-seller.

His father was near preening
about Jack's literary success,

a first in the Kennedy clan.

When the Duchess of Kent
told the ambassador

she thought the boy
was awfully young

to be writing a serious book,
Joe said simply,

"My experience is that my sons
are very precocious."

They were headed in different
directions, Jack and his father,

on account of this war
in Europe.

The German Army had already
occupied Paris

and appeared to be headed
toward London,

and Joe Kennedy was still
advising President Roosevelt

to keep the U.S.
out of the fight.

This was England's war, he said,

and one they were
likely to lose.

Roosevelt was actively
distancing himself

from his wayward ambassador.

By the time Joe Sr.
Was recalled from London,

reporters on both sides
of the Atlantic

were calling him a Hitler
apologist, a defeatist.

Nothing to say
until I've seen the president.

Joe Kennedy returned in disgrace

and in the minority,
and at some point,

he decided he was going to make
a speech defending his position.

Joe had dozens of people
he could have called on:

journalists, newspapermen,
historians, researchers.

He had professional
speechwriters working for him.

But he asked Jack to do it.

Jack Kennedy wasn't a puppet.

He didn't swallow his father's
beliefs, and he said to him,

you can talk about the need for
compromise and for negotiations,

but say over and over and over
again that you hate Nazism,

you hate fascism,
you hate Hitler,

and don't use the word
"isolationist" or "appeaser."

Joe eventually gave that speech,
and he followed some

but not enough
of his son's recommendations

and ended up further on the outs

with the Roosevelt
administration.

Of course there's a risk

in any course of action.

But all doubts as to what
is the best thing we can do

should be resolved
in the one statement:

"How can we best
keep out of war?"

Jack initially defended
his father's isolationism,

but as time went on,

he realized that the United
States needed to help Britain,

to get in the game,
to fight for freedom.

His father was dead set
against American intervention;

Jack becomes for it.

Air cadet Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.

Reports for preliminary
training.

With other college men,
he'll try for Navy wing.

The older Kennedy boys

were doing more
than talking war in 1941.

Joe Jr. signed on as a flier
for the Navy,

even though the U.S.
had not yet entered the fight.

Jack was no less keen to get
his shot at glory if war came.

But he was unable to get past
the military doctors.

His poor health
was impossible to miss.

When he was 20 years old,
he began using steroids.

It reined in his colitis,

but it had terrible
side effects.

And it also began to cause
deterioration of the bones

in his lower back.

So he was rejected as someone
who would be what was called 4F.

He spends five months doing
calisthenics, lifting weights,

trying to build himself up
enough.

He still fails the examination.

He tells his father that
he has to arrange for him

to have a special medical exam,

which basically means
a fixed medical exam,

to clear him so he can
get into the Navy.

The new ensign was assigned
to Naval Intelligence

in Washington, where he became
an instant, if minor, celebrity.

The ambassador's son
found himself at cocktail hours

and dinner parties
with senators, admirals,

foreign diplomats,
newspaper publishers.

They all wanted to know
what the boy author thought

about the big question
of the day:

Should the U.S.
get into the war?

The sudden criminal attacks

perpetrated by the Japanese
in the Pacific

provide the climax of a decade
of international immorality.

Powerful and resourceful
gangsters have banded together

to make war
upon the whole human race.

Their challenge
has now been flung

at the United States of America.

After Pearl Harbor,

America needed warriors
like never before,

but Kennedy remained
at safe remove

in Naval Intelligence.

When he finally, with the help
of family connections,

landed an assignment to train
with a new combat unit,

PT boats, he pronounced himself
"delighted."

Now, you know, PT boats,

they're known as the bucking
broncos of the Navy

because they're very
light-hulled,

and they skim so fast
over the waves

so that each wave is a bounce,
each wave is a jolt.

The men who served with him
said he was always in pain.

This was rough service,
and it was terrible on his back.

Nevertheless, he perseveres

and gets assigned
to the Southwest Pacific,

which is where the action is,
fighting the Japanese.

Kennedy arrived in the Solomon
Islands in the spring of 1943

and took command of a 56-ton
attack boat, PT-109.

He liked his 12-man crew,

but was unimpressed
by the higher-ups.

He was a very junior officer
out in the Pacific.

He was on the margins
of the war.

But he saw how a military
operated not from the top down

but from the bottom up.

And one of his favorite
expressions was,

"The military screws up
everything."

PT-109's skipper did little
to distinguish himself

in his first four months
on duty.

He and his men ran raids
on Japanese supply convoys.

They were shot at
and they fired back,

but steered clear
of major incident

until a hot, starless night
that August.

Out on a routine mission,

Kennedy had his vessel idling
in open water

when a Japanese destroyer
emerged out of the darkness,

racing at 40 knots,
and split his boat in half.

Two of his crewmen
were killed immediately.

It took Kennedy
nearly three hours

swimming around in the dark

to gather the survivors onto
what was left of his PT boat.

His engineer, Pappy McMahon,
was badly burned,

in excruciating pain,
and helpless.

They were still stranded
in open water at daybreak.

Mid-afternoon, what was left
of PT-109 was beginning to sink,

and it looked like
they had been left for dead.

They're drifting,

holding onto the hull
and drifting in the water,

when he sees a group of islands
about three miles off.

He tells them they have
to swim to it to survive.

But how is McMahon
going to swim?

McMahon is wearing
a life jacket.

Kennedy takes one of the straps,
cuts it,

puts one end in his teeth,

tells McMahon
to lay on his back,

and then he tows him
the three miles to this island.

And when he gets up
on the beach, he collapses.

The men who were with Kennedy
that day,

they all speak
of his sense of responsibility:

that it was his job,
that he would spare no effort

to try and get help
for his crew.

It took a week, but Kennedy did
manage to get his crew rescued.

"Fortunately,"
he wrote to his father,

"they misjudged the durability
of a Kennedy."

He made it out alive
a few months later,

sent Stateside
for medical reasons,

and when he arrived
at his parents' winter home

in Palm Beach,

his weight was down
to around 120.

His back was so bad,

he needed a brace
and a cane to walk.

But he was also a war hero;

the Navy had made
a public display

of putting two medals
on his bony chest.

And the story of PT-109 made
great copy, read by millions.

The country needs heroes
at this point in the war.

And so Jack, in a sense,
fulfills that role.

Here is this wealthy son of the
famous ambassador to Britain,

who didn't have to go into this
kind of combat service,

and they don't talk
about the fact

that maybe his seamanship was
in some ways deficient,

in that his boat
was cut in half.

His brother, who was in London
as an aviator,

wrote some letters to him
that were kind of demonstrating

in a subtle way
how envious he was.

Joe Jr., of course,

was not going to be outdone
by his kid brother.

He volunteered
for a dangerous bombing run

across the English Channel,
in spite of the fact

that he had already flown enough
missions to earn a pass home.

Just minutes
into that secret mission,

Joe's bomber exploded
over the English countryside.

His body was never recovered.

"Joe's worldly success was
so assured and inevitable,"

Jack wrote, "that his death

seems to have cut into
the natural order of things."

The depth of his father's
despair was unsettling.

"There is something
about the first-born

that sets him a little apart,"
Joe Sr. wrote.

"You know what great things
I saw in the future for him,

and now it's all over."

The thought never comes
to Joe Sr.

Or anybody else in the family

that now that Joe Jr.
Has been killed,

Jack's got to step in and become
the leader of the family

and run for political office

and become the standard bearer
for the Kennedy family,

because no one thinks Jack
is well enough in 1944.

He's skeletal.

You can't imagine
that this young man

isn't dreadfully,
dreadfully sick.

And the pain from his back is
such that he cannot stand up,

sit down, lie down.

It's unimaginable that he will
be able to campaign for office

or hold office.

Like many decisions in life,

a combination of factors,
uh, pressed on me,

which directed me
into my present profession.

Period.

I was at loose ends
at the end of the war, comma,

I was not very interested
in following a business career.

John Kennedy hinted
in later years

that he had entered politics
to please his father,

but friends who knew him best

suspected the engine
that drove Jack was his own.

When the Congressional seat
once held by his grandfather

and namesake,
John Francis Fitzgerald,

came open at the end of 1945,
Jack jumped in feet first;

he didn't mind if it antagonized
every Democrat in the district

who had dutifully waited
his turn, which it did.

"You're not going
to win this fight,"

one ward boss told Kennedy
to his face.

"You don't belong here."

He's seen as a kind
of carpetbagger, an interloper.

He didn't live in Boston,

and his opponents in the primary
attack him for being a rich boy.

Even his best supporters
wondered if Jack had it in him

to challenge the local
Democratic machine,

or to win in a field
of better-known candidates.

His health was still lousy:

"Yellow as saffron,
thin as a rake,"

one friend said.

"He didn't seem built for
politics," admitted another.

His father, of course,
brings into the picture

some of the very experienced
Boston pols,

and they see him
as a work in progress.

How is this really skinny guy
who doesn't seem all that eager

to clap hands and "press
the flesh," as they say,

how are we going to convert him
into a winning candidate?

They sigh when they see
this kid.

He looks like a high school
student.

The major impediment to Jack

is that he's not a very good
candidate in the beginning.

He's shy, he's withdrawn,

he doesn't like going up
to strangers or shaking hands.

He talks much too fast
when he gives speeches.

Can't look at his audience.

His voice is too high-pitched.

He used to often read
from a prepared text,

and he would do it
in a mechanical way.

They were so afraid
that he would forget his speech

that his sister Eunice
once sat in the front row,

mouthing the words
like an opera prompter.

Long odds or no,

Joe Kennedy poured money
into his boy's race in 1946;

he paid for thousands
of hand-painted yard signs,

advertising in print and radio,

a professional polling
operation.

He distributed 100,000 copies
of the New Yorker article

about Jack's war heroics.

"With the money I spent, I could
have elected my chauffeur,"

he liked to joke.

But his pride
in his oldest remaining son grew

as the campaign unfolded.

His father is watching him
one day

standing at the gates
of a factory,

and this mob of factory workers
come out.

Jack is standing there
shaking hands, asking for votes,

and the father is standing
across the street with a friend.

And he says,

"I never in a million years
thought Jack could do that."

He taught himself...

With the help of lots of money
from his father

and voice coaches
and political coaches...

He taught himself
how to be a candidate.

He taught himself how to look
at the people he was talking to,

how to speak slowly.

He spent twice as much time

talking to the local parish
and the boys' clubs

and the veterans' clubs
and the women's ' clubs.

Whoever invited him, he went.

He never, ever, ever stopped.

This is a man who's wearing

this canvas-covered steel brace
all the time,

and on long days of campaigning,

that's not enough to try
and hold himself up.

So he has an Ace bandage,

and he wraps it
in a figure eight

around his thighs and his back
to give him extra support.

And this is the neighborhood
of three-deckers.

So if you want
to knock on doors,

which is what politics was then,

you had to climb
over and over again

one building and then the next.

And he couldn't climb stairs
in a normal way.

What Jack Kennedy had to do
was do it one step at a time.

He'd put his foot
on the next step

and then pull his other leg up.

And these old pols would see him
climbing these steps

over and over,
and never complaining.

And they'd say,
"How're you feeling?

You're not feeling too good?"

He said, "I'm feeling fine."

He campaigned
from sunrise to midnight,

house to house, pub to pub,
factory gate to factory gate,

until he crumpled in a heap
at the Bunker Hill parade

on the eve of the primary.

Some of the staff thought
he was having a heart attack.

Joe Kennedy told them
to give him his medicine

and get him ready to campaign
the next day: Election Day.

He'd be fine.

Jack won going away,

nearly doubling the second-place
finisher's vote total

in the primary, and now a lock
to win the general election

in the heavily Democratic
district in the fall.

The kid was a winner after all.

His likes had rarely been seen
on Capitol Hill.

He looked a kid, skeleton-thin,
with wrinkled khakis, sneakers,

seersucker jackets,
shirttails hanging out.

And he lived like one.

He was always running late;

left a trail of clothes
and unfinished meals

in his Georgetown townhouse
for his valet to clean up.

He showed up at his office
as little as possible,

took scant interest
in constituent services

and only middling interest
in his committee assignments.

He's very bored

by the day-to-day
duties of a congressman,

and he felt that he really
didn't have significant power.

He spent his evenings

racing to movie theaters
in his convertible,

jockeying with the Washington
trolley,

a different girl in the
passenger seat every night.

"Was it a movie star?"
the newspapers wondered.

"A socialite?

Another airline hostess?"

He's a playboy.

He's a handsome young man.

He wins that office
when he's 29 years old,

and he's really a celebrity.

And he's enjoying himself.

It was a period of great
self-indulgence.

Even as he's this reckless,
glamorous, playful youth,

there was a kind
of vulnerability.

It's there.

In the middle
of the 1947 recess,

a half-year into his first term,

the young Congressman
traveled to Britain

to see his favorite sister,
Kathleen.

"Kick," as the family
called her,

was the Kennedy most like Jack:

independent, rebellious,
full of fun.

During the visit,
Jack collapsed.

The diagnosis was grim:

a malfunctioning of the adrenal
glands called Addison's disease.

A doctor in London
gave him a year to live.

He crossed the Atlantic
in a ship's hospital.

The family told reporters
waiting at the dock

that Jack was suffering
from a flare-up of malaria

he'd contracted
in the South Pacific.

The good news was Joe Kennedy
could afford the latest medicine

and there was a new treatment
for Addison's,

a potent cortisone-based
steroid.

It got him out of his deathbed
and bought him time.

He told one friend he hoped
for maybe ten more years.

Eight months later,

as he was beginning
to regain his strength,

28-year-old Kathleen died
in a plane crash.

Jack was devastated.

He loved Kick.

It was the first time
in his life really,

and maybe the only time,
where he didn't know what to do.

It did make him a fatalist.

He sent the signals
of a kind of person

who suspected that his time
on earth was limited,

and that he had to make
the most of it.

He's lost a brother.

He's lost his sister Kick.

He himself has been near death.

There is a sense of mortality
that lurks in there

but also drives him:

that he's got to accomplish
something before he dies,

that life is finite.

In his second and third terms
in Congress,

John Kennedy
seemed like a new man:

a man in a hurry,

always on the lookout
for ways to distinguish himself.

He exploited his experience

in foreign affairs
and defense policy;

got himself invited
to Senate hearings

as an expert witness

on the military readiness
of our European allies;

criticized President
Harry Truman

for inadequate
civil defense preparations

in the wake of the Russians'
first successful atom bomb test.

What interested him
was the question

of the rising tensions
with the Soviet Union,

with the civil war in China,

with what was happening
in Greece and Turkey,

and how Harry Truman was
responding to the dangers

flowing out of the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe.

One of the great advantages
of having a very rich father

who's willing to spend
whatever his sons ask for

is that you can go on your own
fact-finding missions.

You can travel the world.

And Jack does that twice
in 1951.

He talks to the journalists
and the military men.

He talks to world leaders
and he talks to the opposition.

For seven weeks,
the young congressman traveled

through Israel, Iran, Pakistan,
India, Singapore,

Thailand, French Indochina,
Korea and Japan.

He returned home
with a new insight:

the United States was making
few new friends in those places

and losing old ones.

And Jack Kennedy went
on national radio and television

to deliver the message.

Meet the Press!

Our guest of the afternoon,
ladies and gentlemen,

will be Congressman
John F. Kennedy of Boston.

What do we do
in Indochina, then?

Well, we've tied ourselves
completely with the French,

and after all,
the natives are anxious.

You can never defeat the
Communist movement in Indochina

until you get the support
of the natives,

and you won't get the support
of the natives

as long as they feel the French
are fighting the Communists

in order to hold
their own power there...

Joe Kennedy had been invited to
be on Meet the Press early on.

He said, "No, I don't want
to do it,

but why don't you
invite my son?"

At the time, no junior
congressman had ever been on.

Only the biggest of the biggest
stars in Washington

were on Meet the Press.

But Jack went on.

Mr. Kennedy, when I was
in Boston last week

I heard a good deal of talk
about you:

many who thought that you would
be the Democratic nominee

for the Senate this year
against Henry Cabot Lodge.

Are you going to run?

When Jack told his friends
and his colleagues,

"I'm going to run for the Senate
against Henry Cabot Lodge,"

they were unanimous in saying,
"Don't do it.

"Nobody can beat a Lodge
in Massachusetts.

"And Lodge is as handsome
as you are, speaks as well,

"is as rich, and is a war hero.

Don't even try."

This is a very storied family.

As the old saying went,
"Up in Boston,

"where the Lodges speak
only to Cabots

and the Cabots speak
only to God."

And so can he defeat
this Republican?

And especially in 1952,
it's a Republican year.

His closest advisors told him,
"Don't do it.

"This isn't your time.

"Maybe you should think
about running

for governor of Massachusetts."

No, no, no,
he wanted to run for Senate.

This is a great state
with a great past

and I believe
an even greater future.

If elected
to the United States Senate,

with all of my energies
and all of my resources,

I will fight to secure
that future

for the people of this state and
for the future of our country...

Oh, sh...

And I know that it is not
a one-way street...

Whether 34-year-old John Kennedy
was ready or not

was an open question
in the spring of 1952.

And if elected to the Senate of
the United States this November,

I will fight for the New England
industry, which is so vital...

Uh, can you cut that?

An uphill race
against Henry Cabot Lodge

was just the sort of challenge
the Kennedys liked.

"Run, Jack," was the word
at the family compound.

"You'll knock his block off."

The most gleeful warrior in the
clan was Jack's younger brother,

26 years old, barely out of law
school, hungry to prove himself.

Jack took a chance
on brother Bobby

and put him in charge
of the campaign.

Bobby Kennedy had always wanted

a role in the family,
and he found one.

He was the tough guy.

He does not mince words.

He's someone who is intent

on winning this office
for his brother,

and if it means
stepping on toes,

hurting people's feelings,
so be it.

Bobby was able to come in
and discipline the old hacks

who were hanging around
the campaign office,

tell them to get off their duffs

and go out and knock
on a few doors,

get rid of the ones
who were truly useless.

He passed around
old Joe's money,

put down the politicians
they wanted to get rid of,

made the deals
that had to be made.

Bobby's doing all the hard work,
the dirty work,

and it's liberating to Jack.

Jack was able to float up there,

quoting poetry and being
a sort of young Lancelot.

The Kennedy campaign was not shy

to exploit the special appeal
of the young congressman...

The young bachelor congressman.

His mother, his sisters,
even Bobby's bride, Ethel,

fanned out into parlors
across Massachusetts

to sell Jack to a rising
new bloc of voters.

Women were not so involved
as they are today, of course.

And I think they were
very struck

by the fact that
we were wandering around,

trying to get them
to get out and vote

and get their friends to vote.

Jack came at the end
and gave a very good speech.

People were very
interested in him

because they knew he was a hero
and he was young,

and so they were very interested
in how he did all this

and what he looked like
and everything.

He was a very easy candidate
to sell

because he was good-looking,
he had enormous charm,

he had a great sense of humor.

I mean, he was a real star.

The polls showed Jack
trailing the incumbent senator

as Election Day neared,

but he was working hard
to close the gap.

The demand of campaigning
statewide,

the distances traveled

across the rough
Massachusetts highways,

was punishing,
especially on Jack.

"His mental courage
is so much superior

to his physical strength,"
Joe Kennedy wrote.

"I sometimes wonder what
the final result will be."

Joe had another fear
about his son's health:

if Jack's Addison's disease
became public,

it could cost him the race,
maybe even his political future.

Jack was losing weight,

but the Kennedys said,
"Well, it's just the campaign."

Jack Kennedy
always had a suntan.

Well, they said, "Well, he's out
and he's getting a suntan."

Actually, that was
from his treatment,

cortisone treatments
for Addison's

that darkened his skin.

They covered all that up.

A man who focuses
on the word "vigor"

in his public
and private conversations

must have in mind
a sense of vitality,

human vitality, as an ideal.

Imagine the distance
between the reality

of his own physical troubles

and his ideal of the vigorous,
vital leader.

Such a smart man
would know this distance

and understand the gap
between reality

of his own physical being

and the image
he wanted to project.

Jack kept working down
to the wire.

He still started his day
earlier than his opponent,

traveled more miles,
campaigned later into the night.

He would not allow himself
to lose for lack of effort.

In Senate races,
Representative John F. Kennedy

scores one of the few major
Democratic victories,

decisively defeating
in a tough battle

the Republican incumbent
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.

Well, I guess you're glad
it's over, aren't you, Bobby?

I am, Jack.

They were beginning to be seen
together around town

soon after he entered the Senate
in 1953, two dazzling stars

in Washington's
normally dull firmament.

Jack Kennedy was 35 years old,

the most sought-after bachelor
in the capital.

Jacqueline Bouvier was a shy
23-year-old beauty,

the belle of Manhattan,
Easthampton and Newport.

The couple had met at a dinner
party two years earlier

and had been warily circling
one another ever since.

She was engaged
when she met him,

and she broke it off
very quickly.

She wrote in her diary
that she had an intimation

that Jack would have a profound

and possibly disturbing effect
on her life,

but he was worth it.

She once said to her sister
that to her,

imagination was
the most important thing

she wanted to find in a man,

and she said that's very
difficult to find.

From his standpoint,
she was very different

from the women that he'd known,

which were primarily
his own sisters.

Eunice and Pat and Jean

were what one of his friends
said "tawny, coltish women."

They were energetic

and they were athletic
and they were outspoken.

Jackie, by contrast,
was cerebral and soft-spoken

and they both had a kind of dry
and sly wit.

The romance was carried out
largely in the public eye,

and when Jackie agreed
to marry the senator

in the summer of 1953,

the press was invited
to share the joy.

They were so beautiful.

They were so young.

She was very stylish.

Somebody in the New York Times

wrote that she made the world
safe for brunettes again.

Jackie was smart, gorgeous,

and although she had not been
born into a political family,

she knew precisely what to say.

Jack's closest friend,
Lem Billings,

actually warned her
before they were married

that she was going to be
marrying a man

who was known
for his womanizing,

and that it was unlikely
that he would stop.

And she later said

that instead of being put off
by what Billings said,

she actually viewed it
as kind of a challenge.

"After the first year,
Jackie was wandering around

looking like the survivor
of an airplane crash,"

a friend later remembered.

Her new husband did not
go out of his way

to hide his dalliances from her.

Jack Kennedy treated this
as a matter of personal liberty

and betrayed little guilt.

"He had this thing about him,"

said the man
who introduced the Kennedys,

"which was not under control."

And it wasn't just his
womanizing that stunned Jackie.

"Politics was sort of my enemy,"
she confided.

"We had no home life
whatsoever."

Let's go and meet the newlyweds.

Are you there, Senator?

Yes, right here,
Mr. Murrow.

Good evening, sir.

Thank you.

Good evening,
Mrs. Kennedy.

Good evening.

I understand that the two of you
had a very much publicized...

Whatever her misgivings,

Jackie Kennedy had married
a politician,

and she dutifully
accepted her role.

And you first met the senator
when you interviewed him?

Well, I interviewed him
shortly after I met him.

Well, now, which requires
the most diplomacy:

to interview senators
or to be married to one?

Um, well...

Being married to one, I guess.

Over on Capitol Hill, however,

the Kennedys' star power
had less appeal.

The young senator's way of being

set Democratic leader Lyndon
Johnson's teeth to grinding.

Johnson looked at Jack
as a person who picked and chose

what he would like to do
in the Senate.

And the picking and choosing

wasn't Johnson's idea
of how the Senate ran,

nor was it the idea
of the other Southern moguls

who were in charge.

Kennedy was the troubadour

who came and played
before the banquet

and left before
the dishwashing began.

And I think Lyndon talked about
him in exactly those terms.

Johnson says Kennedy
was pathetic

as a congressman and senator.

He didn't know
how to address the chair,

by which he meant
he didn't even know the rules.

What irked Johnson was that
he couldn't depend on the man.

Kennedy was often absent;

he ducked the controversial
censure vote on Joe McCarthy.

And Kennedy's insistence
on independence was maddening

for the majority leader.

Whether it was civil rights
or labor legislation,

Johnson couldn't count on the
Democrat from Massachusetts

to vote the party line.

Lyndon Johnson could be cutting
about Kennedy

in front of fellow senators,

said he looked like
a victim of rickets,

and joked about
his puny little ankles.

What Johnson didn't see was
how tough Jack Kennedy had to be

just to get out of bed
in the morning.

By 1954, the drug he took
to control his Addison's disease

was eating away at his spine.

It came to a point

that in order for him to walk
from his office

to the Senate floor,

he had to move across
a marble floor,

and it was so hard on his back,
he needed crutches

to allow him to put one foot
in front of another

without excruciating pain.

And so what he decides to do
is to have surgery,

even though it is
a danger to his life.

It requires the fusing of two
large sections of the spine

and a steel plate
inserted there.

What makes it risky is that
he has Addison's disease,

and Addison's disease leads to
infections often during surgery.

His father pleads with him,
"Don't do this operation."

And he holds out the example
of Roosevelt.

He said, "Roosevelt
was president

"and he was in a wheelchair.

You can do it."

Jack said to him,

"I'd rather be dead
than be in a wheelchair

or hobbling around on crutches
in pain the rest of my life."

Jack goes ahead
with the operation.

Hours afterwards,
an infection develops.

Fever spikes.

Last rites are performed.

Jack pulls out,

and Joe has him flown
to Palm Beach.

He would suffer a series
of setbacks in Florida.

The eight-inch incision
on his back would not close;

he developed an abscess,
needed a second surgery.

The convalescence dragged on
into 1955.

Joe watches over him,
hires his doctors, his nurses,

converts a large part
of their Palm Beach house

to a nursing facility,
and encourages Jack.

The Kennedys told reporters

that Jack's back problems
were a result of war injuries.

They did not disclose
his ongoing need of steroids

or his Addison's disease.

Jack, meanwhile,
began work on a second book:

a series of essays
about United States senators

who had risked
their political careers

bucking convention and party
for a greater purpose.

With the help of Library
of Congress research files,

Kennedy, his speechwriter
Ted Sorensen,

and a handful of Senate staffers
produced Profiles in Courage.

For seven, eight months,
Jack recuperates,

and only after a lengthy period

is he able to return
to the Senate.

How does it feel to be back?

Well, I'm glad to be back here

and have a chance to take part
in what's going on.

I'm sure my wife is too.

He returns in pain,

and he will remain in pain
for the rest of his life.

It is now my privilege
to present to this convention,

as a candidate for president
of the United States,

the name of a man
uniquely qualified

by virtue of his compassion,

his conscience
and his courage...

The 1956 Democratic presidential
nominee, Adlai Stevenson,

gave his party's youngest
senator a starring role

at the convention:
the official nominating speech.

And his performance
helped ignite

a Kennedy-for-vice-president
boom.

Adlai E. Stevenson!

How would you like to be
vice president with him?

Well, I'd be honored,
of course, if chosen,

but I've always had my doubts
whether I'd ever be chosen.

He wasn't sure he even wanted
a place on the ticket...

Joe Kennedy had counseled him
to steer clear...

But Stevenson threw the choice
to a floor vote,

and Jack Kennedy had a hard time
backing down from a challenge,

even against the better-known

and esteemed senator
Estes Kefauver.

Jack Kennedy liked his chances,

and he liked the feeling
on the convention floor.

The delegates took
his candidacy seriously.

This whole thing lasted
like 24 hours

before the vice-presidential
balloting.

And Kennedy makes
a real try for it.

Texas proudly casts its vote
for that fighting sailor

who wears the scars of battle,
and that very senator,

the next vice president
of the United States,

John Kennedy of Massachusetts.

For a moment, it seemed actually
like he's going to win.

But Kefauver beats him.

He has to make a concession
speech to Kefauver.

When he gets up there, he's
facing a sea of Kefauver signs.

They're all waving in his face.

And you look at Kennedy,
who's always immaculate.

At this moment,
he is not immaculate.

Ladies and gentlemen...

Ladies and gentlemen
of this convention...

In fact, one point of the collar
of his shirt is sticking out.

And as he's talking,
if you watch his hands,

he has the gavel in his hands

and he restlessly
turns it around.

You saw a young man in defeat,

and you also see someone
who covers it up so well.

I hope that this convention

will make Estes Kefauver's
nomination unanimous.

Thank you.

Jack was very depressed,
very upset.

And Bobby was there,
and he couldn't cheer him up.

And he said, "Let's call Dad."

So I remember when we
all went to call Dad,

and he said, "Congratulations!"

He said to Jack,

"That's the best thing
that ever happened to you.

"That was magnificent.

"I don't know how you did that.

It was absolutely great."

He said, "Adlai Stevenson
is going nowhere."

He said, "He's going nowhere,
and Kefauver's going nowhere.

"So you've just pulled it off,

and I can't tell you
how wonderful that was."

And Jack came out beaming...
Beaming.

Joe Kennedy knew
what he was talking about.

Stevenson lost big
to Eisenhower,

which made the governor
a two-time loser

and left the Democratic
nomination wide open

next time round.

Jack Kennedy understood
the obstacles

to winning the presidency
in 1960,

and they were not small.

He was younger than anybody
ever elected to the office.

He had few legislative
achievements to run on.

And then too,
there was his religion.

In 1957, a quarter
of the electorate still said

they were unwilling to vote
for a Catholic for president.

There was a fear across the land

that Catholics would be
controlled by the Pope,

that they couldn't think
on their own,

and therefore they weren't
really Americans

in the way that
Protestants were.

Some in the party argued the
country would change in time,

that he was still a young man,
that he could wait it out.

Jack Kennedy thought otherwise.

His star turn
at the 1956 convention

meant he would be taken
seriously in 1960.

He was not going to let
this moment pass.

And I want to be sure

that we haven't lost something
important in this country,

that we haven't gone soft...

He had campaigned across the
country for Stevenson in '56.

That we just look
to our own private interests.

Let us cut the budget
and let us save on foreign aid.

And with his speechwriter
Ted Sorensen riding shotgun,

he just kept going in 1957.

The reason the Communists
attack us is because they know

when the United States fails,
the cause of freedom fails.

There were county chairmen
to meet in every state,

delegates to woo.

Jackie was pregnant most
of that year, and nervously so.

She'd already had
one miscarriage

and delivered
a stillborn daughter.

But her husband
rarely stopped traveling.

When Kennedy's new back
specialist went to Palm Beach

for a consultation,
she, too, got the program.

She comes down

and there's this huge map
of the United States

where his father and he
are plotting out, you know,

his next trips.

He's traveling
all around the United States,

trying to make contact
with politicians.

And she says, "Well, you know,

to do this,
you need periods of rest."

And he says, "Well,
there's no time for rest."

And she says, "Well, you have
to change the schedule."

And he said, "The schedule
will not be changed."

When he was in Washington,

Kennedy was always
on the lookout

for ways to take a stand apart

from the other would-be
presidents in the Senate:

Stuart Symington,
Hubert Humphrey

and, above all, the majority
leader, Lyndon Johnson.

This is a strike-breaking,

union-busting bill,
in my opinion.

Mr. Harper, this bill is not
a strike-breaking,

union-busting bill.

You're the best argument
I know for it:

your testimony here
this afternoon,

your complete indifference
to the fact...

He dabbled in domestic issues
where he saw opportunity,

like in the nationally
televised hearings

into racketeering
in the labor unions.

Your complete indifference to it

I think makes this bill
essential.

His chief interest and his focus

remained foreign affairs.

His father even managed
to talk Lyndon Johnson

into giving Jack a coveted slot

on the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee.

When Kennedy said that
he would become chairman

of the African subcommittee

in the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee,

he sort of got a commitment that
it would never have to meet.

And Johnson thought that was
typical of the kind of committee

that Kennedy would like to run.

Scenes like this are taking
place daily all over Algeria,

as French colonial troops round
up natives by the thousands

in a desperate attempt to halt
the guerrilla reign of terror

that has spread the length
and breadth of the colony.

The bloody escalation

of the three-year-old war
for independence in Algeria

gave Senator Kennedy
a shot at the spotlight

and one that played

to his long-held interest
in foreign policy.

He identifies himself

with a kind of anti-colonial
posture,

with the idea
that the United States

is locked in a contest
with the Soviet Union

for hearts and minds
in the Third World,

in the developing world...

In Africa, in Asia,
in Latin America...

And he sees Algeria
as the case study of the time.

I am concerned today that we are
failing to meet the challenge

of imperialism on both counts,
both East and West,

and thus failing
in our responsibilities

to the free world
and to ourselves.

What Kennedy was saying was,

"We know that French imperialism
is going to die out.

"The question is,
are we going to be

"on the right side
or the wrong side of history?

"If we make a choice now,
we can help shape the outcome.

"If we align ourselves
with Paris until the bitter end,

"the new generation of leaders
in Algeria will remember that

and won't talk to us."

I am introducing a resolution

which I believe outlines
the best hopes for peace

and a settlement in Algeria.

Dean Acheson,
the former secretary of state,

came out saying this speech was

"the irresponsible utterings
of a juvenile senator"

because it was throwing aside
our alliance

with Portugal and France
and England

in support of Africa
and Asia, etcetera.

France was a NATO ally of ours
in Europe.

Were we going to abandon
our ally

for the sake of a group
of revolutionaries

who might turn out
to be Communists?

Kennedy said, "Yeah,
you take that chance

because you want to vote with
the future, not with the past."

Senator, what do you feel is
the single most critical issue

facing the Congress
at this time?

Well, I think
it's the same issue

which has been facing us
for ten years,

and that's our relations
with the Soviet Union

and this question
of war and peace

and also the question of whether
the uncommitted countries...

The Middle East,
Africa and Asia...

Will move to the Communist bloc
or our own

and turn the balance of power
for us or against us.

And that's obviously the most
important issue today

and will be during,
I think, our lifetime.

When Sputnik went up
by the Russians,

the surprise
could not have been greater.

How did they get ahead of us?

The Russians claimed
they invented everything:

the car, the plane, penicillin,
whatever it was.

The Russians would always say,
"Oh no, we had that first."

This they had first,
and they proved it.

The October 1957 launch
of Sputnik,

a 184-pound,
beach-ball sized satellite,

spurred an instant jump
in cold war hysteria,

and not without reason.

If the Soviets were able to
launch a satellite into space,

could they also reach the U.S.
with nuclear-armed missiles?

U.S. Air Force bombers
went on 24-hour alert.

The Eisenhower administration

began sending extra planes
into Soviet airspace,

just to remind Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev

who had the upper hand
in bombers.

When President Eisenhower
pursued more, and more potent,

nuclear warheads for the U.S.
arsenal, the Soviets answered.

Six in ten Americans believed
nuclear war was imminent

and would be catastrophic.

Kennedy appeared unruffled

by the rising dangers
of the cold war;

he increased
his travel schedule,

running harder state to state,

the list of delegates
who had supported

his vice-presidential candidacy
tucked in his pocket.

Jack Kennedy could learn
on the run.

So he's traveling
around the country,

and he's seeing
that politics is changing.

He's learning that the power

isn't back
in Washington anymore;

the power is with these younger
people in the states,

if he can just line them up
for him.

He's learning that the old
party machinery doesn't work.

He knows that he's got the money

to mount an independent
campaign,

that he's got the charisma,

without the help
of any party bigwigs

or any party establishment,

to get his photo
on the cover of Time

and the Saturday Evening Post
and Look.

He begins a change
in American politics

that is quite significant.

He signals the beginning
of a move

from party dominance
and party candidates

to the individual,
to the personality

who can speak to the people
not through the party

but through television
and the mass media directly.

It's a pleasure
to have you here,

and I want you to meet
my daughter Caroline

and my wife Jackie.

Joe Kennedy was nudging
every editor he knew in 1959:

"You want to sell magazines?

Put Jack and Jackie
on your cover."

Jackie Kennedy chafed at the
requirement of public display,

but when the photographers
showed up

on the Kennedy doorstep,
she did not disappoint.

It used to drive Humphrey nuts,

because he said, "Every time
I go into the supermarket

"to go shopping for Muriel,

"I see Redbook
or I see Good Housekeeping

"or I see Saturday Evening Post,

all with the Kennedys
smiling at me on the cover."

Senator, when are you
going to drop

this public pretense
of non-candidacy

and frankly admit that
you already are seeking

the Democratic presidential
nomination of 1960?

Well, Mr. Lawrence, I think
there's an appropriate time

for anyone to make a decision
and a final announcement

as to whether he's going
to be a candidate...

It seemed to me

that there was a sort
of perpetual half-smile

on his face.

There was a sense of joy
about what he was doing,

that he loved what he was doing.

He's only 43 years old.

And a woman says to him,
"Young man, it's too soon."

And he says, "No, ma'am,
this is my time."

I am today announcing
my candidacy

for the presidency
of the United States.

The presidency
is the most powerful office

in the free world.

Through its leadership
can come a more vital life

for all of our people.

Kennedy officially announced his
candidacy in January of 1960.

Political odds-makers
put his chances

well below Senators Symington,
Humphrey and Johnson.

Thanks for coming today.

All the luck in the world.

And if the old rules applied,
Kennedy was surely in trouble.

The well-worn path

to the Democratic
presidential nomination

went through the state party
chairmen

and the big city bosses

who still thought they could
keep their delegations in line.

But Kennedy already had
a handful of key players

in every state

and a way to show himself
a winner: the primaries.

The few state primaries

were regarded as side events
before 1960,

fine for junior senators
like Jack Kennedy,

but not worthy
of serious candidates.

Lyndon Johnson sat them out
that year.

Johnson stayed in the Senate,
stayed as majority leader,

told everybody else
who was leaving town

that they should be ashamed
of themselves

and they should be back
legislating, not speaking.

Johnson's supposition is that
he's earned the nomination

by dint of his role
as Senate majority leader,

he has very good relations

with various party bosses
across the country,

and that Jack Kennedy
is an upstart.

"Who is this kid
who's trying to displace me

"and take the nomination?

I deserve it."

Nice to see you.

I'm Senator Humphrey,
just stopping by to say hello.

The most important early primary
was in Wisconsin,

where Kennedy had
a real opponent:

the popular senator
from neighboring Minnesota,

Hubert Humphrey.

Say, that's just what I need
for my campaign.

Can I have that?

I'm running short!

You should realize
that you are voting

for the most important
individual

in the entire free world.

He cast Humphrey
as the establishment candidate

and ran against
the party bosses.

And he cast himself
as the underdog

in spite of a huge advantage
in money and television exposure

and having celebrity backers
like Frank Sinatra.

♪ K-E-double-N-E-D-Y ♪

♪ Jack's the nation's
favorite guy ♪

♪ Everyone wants to back Jack,
Jack is on the right track ♪

♪ Come on and vote for Kennedy,
vote for Kennedy ♪

♪ Keep American strong ♪

♪ Kennedy, he just keeps
rolling a... ♪

♪ Kennedy, he just
keeps rolling a... ♪

♪ Kennedy, he just keeps
rolling along ♪

♪ Vote for Kennedy! ♪

Good evening.

How does the evening
look to you?

Well, as all these
election nights are,

it's a very interesting evening.

He knew on Election Day
he was going to win,

but as the results came in

and his margin was narrower
than he'd expected,

Kennedy began to understand
there would be a caveat:

the party elders could argue
that his victory in Wisconsin

owed to his overwhelming margin

in the state's large bloc
of big-city Catholic voters,

as if his religion had been
an unfair advantage.

He understands
this is not enough.

If he's going to win
that nomination,

he has to convince people
in the Democratic Party

and around the country that
he can win Protestant votes,

that he's more than just
a Catholic candidate.

His sister, after the victory
in Wisconsin, says to him,

"Well, what does it mean?"

He says, "It means we've got
to go on to West Virginia."

West Virginia is a state
with 97% Protestant population.

Humphrey started with a 20-point
lead in West Virginia

and the backing of the state's
popular senator, Robert Byrd.

He also got
a new campaign theme song,

the anti-Catholic dog-whistle,

"Give Me That
Old Time Religion."

The Kennedys answered in kind.

Joe blanketed the state
with money,

buying the support
of crucial local bosses.

Bobby recruited
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr.

To allege that Humphrey
had shirked his military duty

in World War II.

Jack Kennedy and I

served in the United States Navy
for five years...

And John Kennedy
then dismisses this

as a terrible thing
to have been said about Hubert.

And he keeps going
around the state saying,

"It's a terrible thing to say
that Hubert's a draft dodger,

a terrible thing,"

until it fastened itself
on people's minds

that Hubert maybe was
a draft dodger.

Kennedy left West Virginia
on May 11, 1960 with a win.

He got in his private plane,

outfitted to carry staff
and press...

A first in presidential
campaigns...

And flew off to primaries
in Maryland and then Oregon

to pile up more delegates

to take to the nominating
convention that July.

Jack Kennedy is going
around the country.

He's showing the country
what he is:

this charming, incredible,
adept campaigner.

The New York Times says,

"The calliope sound
of a bandwagon

is being heard
in the Democratic Party."

All of a sudden,
Lyndon Johnson wakes up.

Senator Jack Kennedy
of Massachusetts

has won every primary
in which he's entered.

He's won them in a breeze.

Does this entitle him...

Senator Kennedy is a very
attractive and able young man.

Let me finish my question:
does this entitle him

to the Democratic
presidential nomination?

Well, I wouldn't think

that we would want to nominate
our president

on the basis of what four states
or five states or six states

or eight states might say
in a limited primary system

where only a few people
participate.

By the time he got around
to announcing his candidacy

for the Democratic
presidential nomination,

just a week before the party
convention in Los Angeles,

Johnson needed a miracle.

So he pulled out
his last best hope:

he sent a private investigator

to dig up Kennedy's
health records.

They get to the Democratic
convention in Los Angeles,

and Johnson unleashes his aide,
a man named John Connally,

and Connally will issue a story

about Kennedy's
Addison's disease,

raising the question of whether
Kennedy is physically capable

of serving as president.

That Jack Kennedy suffered
from Addison's disease

was a fact beyond dispute.

But the Kennedys disputed it.

"John F. Kennedy does not now
nor has he ever had an ailment

described classically
as Addison's disease,"

Bobby claimed.

The Addison's story
didn't stick,

but Johnson
kept fighting anyway;

he still couldn't believe
Jack Kennedy, of all people,

could take the nomination
away from him.

For six days and nights,
we had 24-hour sessions.

Six days and nights, I had
to deliver a quorum of 51 men,

on a moment's notice,
to keep the Senate in session

to get any bill at all.

I'm proud to tell you that
on those 50 quorum calls,

Lyndon Johnson answered
every one of them.

Although some men
who would be president

on a civil rights platform
answered none.

Let me just say I appreciate
what Senator Johnson had to say.

He made some general references
to, uh, perhaps the shortcomings

of other presidential
candidates,

but as he was not specific,
I assume he was talking

about some of the other
candidates and not about me.

Kennedy parried Johnson
with the grace of a sure winner.

Bobby, meanwhile,
was working the phones,

keeping a white-knuckle grip

on his brother's
committed delegates.

He knew Johnson operatives were
still trying to peel them away.

California casts seven-and-one-
half votes for Johnson,

33-and-one-half votes
for Kennedy.

The Kennedy campaign thought
they had every hole plugged,

and were aware that
if something came unplugged,

they wanted to be
on top of it immediately.

Senator Kennedy,
104-and-a-half votes.

And every delegation
was covered.

Wyoming votes from its majority
for Senator Kennedy.

The motion is that
the rules be suspended

and that John F. Kennedy
be nominated

for president of the United
States by acclamation!

Ladies and gentlemen,
your nominee

and the next president
of the United States,

John F. Kennedy!

The next morning at 6:30,

the phone rings
in Bobby Kennedy's suite.

It's his brother.

He says, "Count up
how many votes we have

if we take the Northeast,
the Eastern states, plus Texas."

Bobby Kennedy calls in
two of his top advisors,

Ken O'Donnell
and Pierre Salinger.

He says to them, "Count up
these votes, plus Texas."

Salinger, as he calls, says,

"You're not thinking
of nominating Lyndon Johnson.

You can't do that!"

Kennedy knew how Johnson
talked about him:

"Little Johnny," or "Sonny Boy,"

"heard his pediatricians
have given him

a clean bill of health."

And he knew his brother Bobby
despised Johnson.

But hatred was
one of the few luxuries

Kennedy could not afford,
not in picking a running mate.

The numbers said he needed to
win Texas to win the presidency,

and there was one man
who could deliver the state.

Robert Kennedy tried to stop it.

He went down to try to persuade
Johnson not to accept it,

that the opposition to him
was too great.

I remember how haggard
Bobby looked.

Johnson obviously had told him

that he didn't want to speak
to his brother's spokesman;

he wanted to speak
to his brother.

"If Jack had anything to say,
he can call me.

Here's my phone number."

Senator Kennedy
announced his choice

is Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson
of the state of Texas,

the Senate majority leader

and his foremost rival
for the presidential nomination.

There are many compartments
in Jack's mind.

I think the main one was that
he wanted to win.

And there is the presidential
candidate,

Senator John Kennedy
of Massachusetts,

as he comes out of the Biltmore
Hotel to come to his car.

This motorcade will drive
the three miles out here...

to the Coliseum.

John F. Kennedy
had never lost an election,

and now, against all odds,
at age 43,

he was just one win away
from the presidency.

He was confident
he could get there.

What the American voters craved,
Kennedy had come to understand,

was a good story,

and the set piece Kennedy
would campaign on

in the general election
had it all:

good versus evil;
freedom versus slavery;

a youthful paladin...
That would be himself...

And his powerful antagonist:

the Soviet premier,
Nikita Khrushchev,

who proved the perfect foil
in 1960.

For the world is changing.

The old era is ending.

The old ways will not do.

Abroad, the balance of power
is shifting.

New and more terrible weapons
are coming into use.

One third of the world
may be free,

but one third is the victim
of a cruel repression

and the other third is racked by
poverty and hunger and disease.

Communist influence
has penetrated into Asia.

It stands in the Middle East

and now festers some 90 miles
off the coast of Florida.

Khrushchev had come
to the United States

and the United Nations session
in September of 1960,

banged the shoe on the desk,
and said, "We will bury you.

We are grinding out missiles
like sausages."

So there was a heightened sense
of competition,

and this appealed to Kennedy's
competitive spirit.

And I say we can't afford
to have the White House

as a training ground
for an inexperienced man...

Kennedy was certain he could
show himself the better man

in a race against the sitting
vice president, Richard Nixon.

But I am not satisfied
as an American

to be second to the Soviet Union
in sending a missile to the Moon

or sending Sputnik
around the globe

or having the second
strongest...

The polls, however,
showed a dead heat

coming out of the conventions,

and Kennedy could not shake free
from the mire of religion.

He watched with increasing ire

as Protestant ministers
across the country

stirred opposition
among their parishioners.

The Reverend
Martin Luther King Sr.

Said he could not in good
conscience vote for a Catholic.

He instructed his flock
to vote for Nixon.

It was very nasty.

I mean, let's just be blunt
about it.

For a while, he didn't really
want to have to deal with it.

He just wanted people
to look at him

and judge him on his own record.

But it was getting so virulent
and so scary

that he then,
in the fall campaign,

went to Houston
and spoke to the ministers,

went sort of into the belly
of the beast, as it were.

Reverend Meza, Reverend Rock,

I'm grateful for your generous
invitation to state my views.

His advisors said,
"Don't do this.

"You are just making religion
an issue.

"You are actually speaking
to the bigots.

"The bigots want you to remind
people that you're a Catholic.

Don't do this!"

He did it.

So it is apparently necessary
for me to state once again

not what kind of church
I believe in,

for that should be important
only to me,

but what kind of America
I believe in.

I believe in an America

where the separation
of church and state is absolute.

He was making sort of a moral,
ethical argument

about what it means
to be American.

And this is the kind of America
I fought for

in the South Pacific

and the kind my brother
died for in Europe.

No one suggested then that
we might have a divided loyalty,

that we did not believe
in liberty,

or that we belonged
to a disloyal group

that threatened, I quote,

"The freedoms for which
our forefathers died."

And he said, "We would hate
to have a country

"that millions of people who,
on the day they're baptized,

are told they can't be president
of the United States."

So I want you to know
that I'm grateful to you

for inviting me tonight.

I'm sure that I have made
no converts to my church...

but I do hope that
at least my view,

which I believe to be the view

of my fellow Catholics
who hold office,

I hope that it may be
of some value

in at least assisting you
to make a careful judgment.

Thank you.

The general election campaign
of 1960 featured a new wrinkle:

the first-ever one-on-one
debates

between the major-party
candidates,

broadcast live
across the nation.

In every campaign from '46 on,

his father taught Jack how to
use the camera as his friend,

how to look into the camera,

to smile, look charming,
but be serious.

It was no accident,
no accident at all,

that when Jack Kennedy
debates Nixon,

Nixon, the champion debater,
comes off worse

because Nixon doesn't know
how to look into a camera.

He doesn't know how to connect
with an audience.

He looks stiff, sweaty, scared.

And Jack is totally,
absolutely composed.

This is not to compare
what might have been done

eight years ago or ten years ago

or 15 years ago or 20 years ago.

I want to compare
what we're doing...

Nixon was someone who would
sweat under the Klieg lights,

and his makeup ran,
and somebody later said,

"He looked like
a sinister chipmunk."

I will concede

that in all the areas
to which I have referred...

According to opinion polling,

the majority of people
who listened in on radio

thought Nixon won
the first debate.

If we appoint people

to ambassadorships
and positions in Washington...

Among television viewers,
the clear winner was Kennedy.

Then the United States
does not maintain its influence.

The split decision
in the opening debate

was a wake-up call,

and through the next
three debates

and every day in between,

Kennedy kept hammering
at Eisenhower and Nixon.

Can you imagine if this country
elects Dick Nixon

Republican president
of the United States?

He hit them
for allowing Americans

to lose their sense
of national purpose,

for allowing the U.S.
economic engine to sputter

as compared to the Soviets',

for allowing the United States
to fall behind the Soviet Union

in science and technology,

and most dangerously,
in nuclear arms:

what Kennedy called
the "missile gap."

If there is any lesson
of the summit,

it is that the Communists
believe that

the military balance of power
is shifting in their direction.

Why was the United States unable

to get an indictment
of Castro by name?

Jack was the representative

of the new, young,
vibrant generation.

And Jack ran on that theme
and ran hard.

The United States looks tired.

It looks like our brightest days
have been in the past.

It looks like the Communists
are reaching for the future,

and we sit back and talk
about the ideals

of the American Revolution.

He says Eisenhower
was an old man

who wasn't watching
over the store anymore,

and Nixon was his accomplice.

And only this young hero,
Jack Kennedy,

who knew how to fight
and knew how to win

was going to put
the United States

back in its commanding
position again.

And there's a direct line
between what Jack says in 1960

and what he writes in 1939,
Why England Slept:

the only way to deter aggression

is to have an impregnable
military defense,

and I'm the one who can build
that military

because I'm the new man,
the man of the future,

the new generation,
not an old, tired Republican.

Kennedy opened
a comfortable lead

in the polls in mid-October,

but he was careful
not to get swept up

in the energy and excitement
of his rallies.

The Catholic question
still worried him,

and the issue of civil rights

demanded cunning
political calculation.

He placated white-supremacist
Democrats in the South,

who insisted on their right
to enforce segregation

in their own states.

But he also meant
to signal his sympathy

to the growing number
of African-American voters,

North and South.

At that time, the 1960s,

the black community
across the South

were largely Abraham Lincoln
Republicans.

My parents were Republicans.

And I was rather cynical
about the Kennedy family,

that they didn't know
any black people.

There was a deep-seated
personal suffering

that we had known
in rural South,

but Kennedy didn't know
any of that.

Kennedy shadowed Nixon's
position on civil rights:

both candidates talked
of promoting equal opportunity

for everyone,

but neither was willing
to pledge federal power

to actually enforce
court-ordered integration

of schools and public
accommodations.

As the campaign headed
into its final days, though,

Kennedy found a way
to separate himself from Nixon.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,

the nation's most respected
civil rights leader,

was arrested at a protest
in Georgia.

They put him in chains and put
him in the back of a paddy wagon

and drove him 300 miles south
to Reidsville Penitentiary

in the middle of the night,
and nobody knew where he was.

Coretta King was
six months pregnant,

and I had never seen her panic,
but she was panicked by this

and called me and said,

"I think they're going
to kill him,"

and, you know,
"Can't you do anything?"

Kennedy's brother-in-law,
Sargent Shriver,

went to see if the candidate

might be willing to reach out
to Dr. King's wife.

Shriver knew the Kennedy
political operation

wanted no part
of a civil rights controversy

in the final days
of the campaign.

He said, "You know, you've been
trying to figure out

"what you could do that would
help in this situation.

"You can't issue
a public statement,

but what about calling her
and conveying your sympathy?"

He said Kennedy thought
for a couple of minutes,

and then a good Kennedy grin,
said, "That's a very good idea.

Do you have her number?"

On the airplane,
Salinger asked Kennedy,

"Did you do anything
when we were all out?"

And he said, "Yeah, I called
Mrs. Martin Luther King."

And they went wild,

and Bobby was just livid
with anger and fury,

and fear that it was going

to lose a number
of Southern states.

Bobby eventually calmed down

and made a series of discreet
phone calls to help free King.

But Kennedy's team kept most
of the maneuvering under wraps,

and they did not talk up
the call to Coretta

to the national press.

They were, however,
quick to take advantage

when Mrs. King went public

about her sympathetic call
from Kennedy.

The campaign printed hundreds
of thousands of pamphlets

telling the story of Kennedy's
kindness to the King family

and Nixon's silence,

and shipped those pamphlets
across the country,

many by Greyhound bus, to be
distributed at black churches.

The reaction that got the
publicity was Daddy King saying,

"I got a whole suitcase
full of votes,

"and I'm going to throw them
toward this Kennedy boy.

"I wasn't sure about a Catholic
in the White House,

but he's won me over."

♪ Kennedy is showing,
that's why Kennedy is going... ♪

In the final push
of the campaign,

the crowds that came out

were the biggest Kennedy
had ever seen,

but the candidate was spent
and edgy.

He didn't like the feel
of the race;

on the eve of the election,

he was sure Nixon
was closing on him.

He wanted to fly west
for a little extra campaigning.

His advisors insisted
there was little left to do,

and so Kennedy settled in at the
family compound in Hyannisport

to watch the results come in.

♪ All the way! ♪

The house next door,
which was Bobby's house,

was set up as
campaign headquarters,

and all the children's bedrooms
were turned into research rooms.

As the returns came in,
it was frighteningly close.

There was a problem
with the Catholic vote,

which they had hoped
would be 90%, was 80%.

But worse,
traditional Democratic votes

in Protestant areas
were not coming in Democratic.

Protestants weren't voting
for Jack Kennedy.

They were either just not voting
or they were voting for Nixon.

We're trying to settle here,

so far without any success,
or without enough success,

one of the closest elections

in the history
of the United States.

And so we just waited.

Nobody could eat much.

And calls were coming in
from various states.

Jack was over at his house,

and Bobby would keep in touch
with him.

That's the way it lasted
through the night.

I finally went to bed,

and it still hadn't
been decided.

Kennedy didn't know
if he'd won or not

when he went to sleep
that night;

the press was unable
to make sense of the vote totals

out of Cook County, Illinois.

We still have some states
that aren't certain...

Texas was neck-and-neck.

Nobody could call California.

So it's 6:00 a.m. in New York,

and I don't know
how long we'll be here.

Nobody's told us yet.

Ray Sherer, NBC's campaign
and election reporter,

is now standing by
at Hyannis, Massachusetts.

Is Senator Kennedy asleep,
do you know?

He's asleep, Dave,
he's gonna rise at 9:15.

He got in the sack about 4:30.

That'll give him
about five hours,

and he's gonna check first thing

to see if there has been
any word from Mr. Nixon,

and maybe there won't,

in which case you fellas will
have to stay on the air all day.

When he did wake up
the next morning,

Jack Kennedy was
president-elect.

He had won the popular vote

by less than one quarter
of one percent.

It was very nerve wracking,
and then it was done.

So we went out
and played touch football.

And our father came out, said,
"It's time for lunch."

And whenever he wanted,
he got immediately.

He was a stickler for time.

Jack and I were the last ones
to go up,

and he turned to me and said,

"Doesn't he know I'm president
of the United States?"

And I thought, "That's a perfect
ending to a day."

Kennedy's razor-thin advantages
in Illinois and ten other states

had made the difference
in electoral votes.

His huge margin
among black voters

helped pull him through

in as many as five
of those key states.

And the bet on Lyndon Johnson
had paid off;

the Kennedy-Johnson ticket
had carried Texas.

There he is, there he is,

the next president
of the United States.

He always sits
in the front seat,

and incidentally,
so does Mr. Khrushchev.

These people find you can wave
more easily from that point.

And I can assure you

that every degree of mind
and spirit that I possess

will be devoted
to the long-range interest

of the United States

and to the cause
of freedom around the world.

So now my wife and I prepare
for a new administration

and for a new baby.

Thank you.

John F. Kennedy had spent
the campaign of 1960

telling the American people

he would be a new kind
of president.

He'd promised not just dynamism,
but strength.

He had promised to stand up
to the Soviets

and to protect American
preeminence in the world.

His stubborn insistence

on being the kind of leader
he'd vowed to be

would make his presidency
among the most energetic,

the most far-reaching,
the most perilous,

and the most tragic
in American history.

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