John F. Kennedy’s election in 1960 coincided with the transition to a new era in American history. There was a marked difference between the outgoing Republican president—a seventy-year-old grandfather and former general—and the incoming charismatic forty-three-year-old Democrat with the attractive wife, young daughter, and new baby expected before the Inauguration.
The challenges facing this new, relatively inexperienced president were daunting, however, and he would have to prove himself. In the wake of the U-2 spy plane incident, tensions with the Soviet Union were high, and there was growing fear of the spread of Communism in the Western Hemisphere as Cuba’s revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, aligned his regime with the Soviets. Many Americans believed war with the Soviet Union was inevitable. Additionally, racial tensions were mounting—especially throughout the South—as the civil rights movement was coming to the forefront.
Kennedy would note in his Inaugural Address, “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.”
There was a confidence in John F. Kennedy, and his vision provided a sense of hope and promise.