JFK LOOKS BACK ON 1961
West Palm Beach (JFK+50) President John F. Kennedy self-critiqued his first year in office. It was published in an article for United Press International written by Merriman Smith*.
The President is described in the article as "cautiously confident" that the Western alliance "came out ahead...after a year of escalating Cold War tensions."
The divided city of Berlin, in JFK's view, would remain a focal point of negotiations with the USSR and would "serve as a barometer of East-West relations" in future years.
The President did not hold much hope for improvement in relations between the Superpowers, a view that was to prove correct in the coming October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
JFK saw his foreign policy as a basic continuation of United States foreign policy since the end of World War II. His policy in South Vietnam was based on the idea of the containment of the spread of communism by "supporting the success of independent, free states worldwide."
*Albert Merriman Smith (1913-1970) was born in Savannah, GA. AMS covered presidents from FDR to Nixon & originated the practice of saying "Thank you, Mr. President" at the end of news conferences. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his coverage of JFK's assassination and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1967.
SOURCE
"JFK Assesses His Year in Office, A Chronicle of the 1,036 Days of John F. Kennedy's Presidency," JFK Day By Day, by Terry Golway and Les Krantz,
Running Press Book Publishers, Philadelphia, 2010.
West Palm Beach (JFK+50) President John F. Kennedy self-critiqued his first year in office. It was published in an article for United Press International written by Merriman Smith*.
The President is described in the article as "cautiously confident" that the Western alliance "came out ahead...after a year of escalating Cold War tensions."
The divided city of Berlin, in JFK's view, would remain a focal point of negotiations with the USSR and would "serve as a barometer of East-West relations" in future years.
The President did not hold much hope for improvement in relations between the Superpowers, a view that was to prove correct in the coming October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
JFK saw his foreign policy as a basic continuation of United States foreign policy since the end of World War II. His policy in South Vietnam was based on the idea of the containment of the spread of communism by "supporting the success of independent, free states worldwide."
*Albert Merriman Smith (1913-1970) was born in Savannah, GA. AMS covered presidents from FDR to Nixon & originated the practice of saying "Thank you, Mr. President" at the end of news conferences. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his coverage of JFK's assassination and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1967.
SOURCE
"JFK Assesses His Year in Office, A Chronicle of the 1,036 Days of John F. Kennedy's Presidency," JFK Day By Day, by Terry Golway and Les Krantz,
Running Press Book Publishers, Philadelphia, 2010.
Merriman Smith
Between JFK & Harold Macmillan
Correspondents Dinner
Washington, D.C. (1962)
Photo by Abbie Rowe
JFK Library Image
