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John F. Kennedy was my boyhood hero. I welcomed the opportunity to write about him at the start of the new millennium for Irish America magazine. John F. Kennedy:An Appreciation Young people today know John F. Kennedy primarily for being assassinated and for his presumed dalliance with Marilyn Monroe.That’s a shame, because he meant something far different to an entire generation of Americans, myself included, who were young forty years ago. When JFK was nominated for president in 1960, he was forty-three years old. He cut his hair to look older and curbed his humor to appear more serious.Ethnic and religious barriers were higher in national politics then than they are now. No Italian American or African American had ever been a member of the president’s cabinet. Only one Catholic, Al Smith in 1928, had been nominated by a major party for national office. Kennedy’s Irish-Catholic heritage was a formidable obstacle to election. All eight of his great-grandparents had come to the United States from Ireland,and the Kennedys were considered the epitome of a Boston IrishCatholic family. But he shattered religious and ethnic taboos in a campaign that is now part of American political lore. In accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for the presidency, Kennedy declared,‘‘The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises; it is a set of challenges. It sums up, not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them.’’ On the day of his inauguration, he urged each and every American to,‘‘Ask not what your country can do for you.Ask what you can do for your country.’’ The Camelot Presidency followed. Kennedy was exciting and inspirational ; handsome with dazzling charm, grace, and wit. His humor was spontaneous; not the canned laugh lines written by ghostwriters that we hear from politicians today. It could surface at any time and no one was immune to it.In 1961,with the ColdWar at its peak,JFK met with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna. At one point, he asked about a REFLECTIONS 197 medal that was affixed to Khrushchev’s jacket and learned that it was the Lenin Peace Prize.“I hope you keep it,” Kennedy told him. During his short tenure in office, JFK presided over a rebirth of American politics. The environmental movement and nuclear sanity began on his watch with passage of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. He was a forceful advocate for civil rights,and accelerated the space program with the goal of landing a man on the moon by 1970. He also championed the Peace Corps, which gave the United States a benign role to play overseas instead of a more aggressive presence. But Kennedy’s most important contribution to American life was the infusion of a new spirit. His words moved a nation and inspired much of what was good in the United States in the 1960s. For most politicians today, the first and last value is themselves. Politics in America is now brought to the people by television, with illusion and deceit substituted for reality.Oftentimes,candidates don’t even say what they think.They say what media advisers tell them to say. Rather than act in accord with honestly held beliefs, they rely upon opinion polls to distinguish ‘‘right’’ from ‘‘wrong.” Getting elected is the ultimate value; an end in itself, not the means to a better end. By contrast, Kennedy was an honorable politician in that he was committed to using the power of his office to making the world a better place to live. He came from privilege, yet cared about those less fortunate than himself. Under his stewardship, there was a commitment to build a more equitable society and close the gap between rich and poor. Kennedy was also the first American president to visit Ireland during his term of office.Viewed through the prism of history,it was a largely sentimental journey, but it meant a lot to people at the time. Over a four-day span in June 1963, JFK met with distant cousins and received honorary degrees from National University andTrinity College. He also addressed a joint assembly of the Irish Parliament in its first televised session ever. Again and again during his days in Ireland, the president sounded nostalgic themes:“No country in the history of the world has endured the hemorrhage which this island endured over a period...

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