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Roosevelt and Kennedy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2011

David K. Adams
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Extract

Historical analogies are often misleading, but the character of John F. Kennedy's administration can be usefully illuminated by consideration of the points of resemblance which it bears to the peacetime administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Superficially of course the influx of intellectuals into the federal capital in the winter of 1960–1961 recalls the gathering of the brain-trusters in Washington in 1933. But there are two more fundamental aspects of the Kennedy presidency which remind the observer of the Roosevelt period. These are the philosophy of the New Frontier, with its conscious overtones of the New Deal and its radical challenge to the traditions of laissez faire; and the political problem inherent in the composition of the Democratic party.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies , Volume 7 , December 1963 , pp. 29 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © British Association for American Studies 1963

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References

REFERENCES

1.President Kennedy Speaks, (U.S. I S., 1961) pp. 2–5.Google Scholar
2.The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt Vol. IV (New York, 1938) p. 338.Google Scholar
3.Messages and Papers of the Presidents. John F. Kennedy Vol. 1 (Washington D.C., 1962) pp. 1–3.Google Scholar
4.New York Times, 2 June 1961.Google Scholar
5.Carr, R.K., Bernstein, M.H., Morrison, D.H., Snyder, R.C. and McLean, J.E.: American Democracy in Theory and Practice, (rev. ed. New York, 1955) p.404.Google Scholar
6. Cf. Scammon, Richard M.: America Votes 1 (New York, 1956) pp. 277–291; America Votes 4, (Pittsburg, 1962) pp. 313–328.Google Scholar
7. The political significance of southern dominance of senate committee chairmanships was underlined in August 1963. Senator Richard Russell (Democrat, Georgia) called a meeting in the Armed Services Committee Room, Old Senate Office Building, to plan southern strategy against Kennedy's Civil Rights Bill. The chairmen of nine of the sixteen standing committees of the senate were present, and there would have been ten had not FuIbright of Arkansas been out of the country at the time. Newsweek, 19 August 1963.Google Scholar
8.Bums, James MacGregor: Roosevelt The Lion and The Fox, (London, 1956) pp. 197 ff.Google Scholar
9.Rosenman, Samuel I.: Working with Roosevelt (London, 1952) p. 41.Google Scholar
10. The sense of Roosevelt's remark was once paraphrased to Kennedy: … “a wise old colleague once remarked to Senator John F. Kennedy that though he be the world's greatest statesman, a President of the United States might as well be a dunce unless he was politician enough to get his program through Congress”. New York Times, 30 July 1961.Google Scholar
11.New York Times, 8 and 15 November 1962.Google Scholar