JFKs inaugural address and Dear Mr President Essays - Chivalry

JFK's inaugural address and Dear Mr President Essays - Chivalry JFK's inaugural address and Dear Mr President On January 20, 1961, as on most presidential inauguration days, the nation was governed by one president until noon and by another afterward. The contrast between outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his incoming successor, John F. Kennedy, was dramatic and visible. The youngest man ever to be elected president (Kennedy was forty-three) was replacing the oldest man yet to leave the office (Eisenhower was seventy). A Democrat was replacing a Republican. A celebrated World War II combat hero was replacing the celebrated World War II supreme commander. A professional politician who had served three terms in the House of Representatives and less than two terms as the junior senator from Massachusetts was replacing a career military leader whose first and only elective office was the presidency. Most importantly, perhaps, Kennedy's election replaced a defender of caution, prudence, and restraint with an advocate of change and energetic leadership. Kennedy was the type of man that reached out to the audience and showed them that his role as president was the way to bring about change and freedom to the world. adversary during the Cold War: "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate." But he also pledged that "we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." In the best-remembered phrase of his presidency, Kennedy summoned the idealism of the American people: "ask not what your country can do for youask what you can do for your country." The call was broadly appealing. It "resonated with liberals who shared Kennedy's belief in public service, and with conservatives who were weary of government handouts.