National Affairs: Promise Kept

In his opening campaign speech, young Jack Kennedy recalled a promise he had made when he was a PT-boat skipper in the Solomons. Said he: "When ships were sinking and young Americans were dying ... I firmly resolved to serve my country in peace as honestly as I tried to serve it in war." His method of serving was to try for Congress as a Democrat from Massachusetts' Eleventh District.

He was well equipped with a platform. As early as 1940, still a Harvard senior, John F. Kennedy had ably interpreted the failures of British foreign policy as a warning to the...

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