From 50 Years Ago: President Kennedy

The relief with which the world has greeted the election of Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy as the next President of the United States is genu-ine and well-founded. Mr Kennedy seems to have all the qualities of head and heart which are most needed at the moment for a sensible and enlightened tackling of the international issues…The President-elect is…, a man who arouses strong reactions among people, not all of them favourable. Personal popularity cannot, therefore, have been the main reason for his election. Is it, then, his programme? That, again, is doubtful – though it is fairly clear that his promises of social welfare did prove a tempta-tion for a considerable section of the elector-ate. …there was much in common between the declared programmes of Kennedy and Nixon, especially in the field of foreign affairs. On the great question of disarmament, both proclaimed themselves to be disturbed by the might of Russia; indeed, if anything, it is Kennedy who took a stronger stand on a programme of increasing his country’s military power further…Both favoured a programme of giving technical and financial aid to the new countries of Asia and Africa. What, then, could govern the choice of the electors in so confus-ingly similar a set of alternatives? …the choice became clearer in favour of Kennedy, because the majority of the people ob-viously felt that his party was more likely to let him honour the pledges he made than the Re-publicans. The pull of party pressures in the Democratic Party, it is generally recognised, will be on the side of enlightenment and a more dar-ing experiment with new ideas; while the Re-publicans would have dragged Nixon, whatever his electoral promises, towards conservatism.