http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=8862

[accessed August 14, 2012].

9. John F. Kennedy, "Speech of Senator John F. Kennedy, Civic Auditorium, Seattle, WA," September 6, 1960, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project,

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25654

[accessed August 14, 2012].

10. Kennedy, "Inaugural Address,"

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=8032.

[accessed August 14, 2012].

11. 56% of Republicans singled out "Ask not ...," compared with 47% of Democrats and 42% of Independents.

12. Respondents viewed footage of the following: (1) "But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too ... We shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, reentering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun-almost as hot as it is here today-and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out, then we must be bold." (2) "So, let us not be blind to our differences-but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal." (3) "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." (4) "It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union ... I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations." (5) "We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay? One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free."

13. All respondents were asked if they were "fairly" or "very" familiar with the following: Set a goal of putting a man on the moon within 10 years-66%; Stood up to the Soviet Union on the expansion of missiles into Cuba-65%; Used the authority of the federal government to protect the civil rights of African Americans in desegregating schools in Alabama and Mississippi-58%; Proposed the legislation that became the Civil Rights Act-52%; As the first Catholic president, spoke about the importance of the separation of church and state-46%; Developed the Peace Corps to influence public service-47%; Supported Berliners in their stance against communism-40%; Negotiated and signed the first treaty ending above ground testing of nuclear weapons-32%; Issued an executive order creating a commission on women, and signed the first equal pay law-30%; Passed a major tax cut-21%. More information on this poll, including the breakdown by age, is available at TheKennedyHalfCentury.com.

14. Here are our respondents' top choices of JFK's greatest accomplishments (combined percentages, all adults): Stood up to the Soviet Union on the expansion of missiles into Cuba-51%; Proposed the legislation that became the Civil Rights Act-48%; Used the authority of the federal government to protect the civil rights of African Americans in desegregating schools in Alabama and Mississippi-43%; Set a goal of putting a man on the moon within 10 years-38%; Issued an executive order creating a commission on women, and signed the first equal pay law-33%; Negotiated and signed the first treaty ending above ground testing of nuclear weapons-25%; Developed the Peace Corps to influence public service-19%; As the first Catholic president, spoke about the importance of the separation of church and state-17%; Passed a major tax cut-15%; Supported Berliners in their stance against Communism-10%.

15. All respondents were asked if they had "fairly" or "very" major concerns about the following: Under JFK, U.S. involvement in Vietnam escalated, which led us into the Vietnam War-53%; JFK approved the wiretapping of civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr., and his advisers-46%; JFK was involved in several extramarital affairs while he was in the White House, including recent accounts of his relationship with a 19-year-old White House intern-33%; Through the CIA, JFK secretly supported coups and the assassination of foreign leaders in Latin America, Iraq, and Vietnam-30%; JFK was unable to push through major civil rights legislation during his own presidency, and it was not until Lyndon Johnson became president that the Civil Rights Act was passed-23%. More information on this poll, including the breakdown by age, is available at TheKennedyHalfCentury.com.

16. The final 3% said, a bit oddly, that the affairs made them feel more unfavorable to JFK as a president but did not affect their view of JFK as a person.

17. The "strongly agree" total for age 55+ was 38%, to 32% for those 54 and under.

18. Among those under age 55, 93% chose 9/11, with the Oklahoma City bombing second at 35% and the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger at 20%.

19. The other "clear and vivid" ratings were: Challenger explosion (63%), Oklahoma City bombing (36%), and the King assassination (34%). In each case, we included only respondents who were old enough at the time of the event to potentially recall it.

20. Respondents 55 and older were asked which major televised events they remembered watching on live television during the assassination weekend. JFK's funeral procession-81%; John F. Kennedy, Jr., saluting his father's coffin-73%; JFK's coffin lying in repose in the White House-68%; Watching Air Force One land for the removal of JFK's coffin-57%; The lighting of the eternal flame and JFK's burial in Arlington-57%; Jackie Kennedy watching LBJ being sworn in as president-55%; Watching Walter Cronkite report on the JFK assassination-50%; The shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald-43%; The assassination of JFK in a convertible in Texas-31%. More information on this poll, including a breakdown of those who remember watching the events on television after they occurred or not at all, is available at TheKennedyHalfCentury.com.

21. The numbers for all responses add to more than 100% since respondents were permitted to choose up to two options.

22. The poll question on this topic was kept simple and structured to prompt respondents to make a basic choice: "There has been significant speculation about the circumstances surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Which statement do you agree with more?" (1) "There is nothing left to know about the circumstances surrounding the Kennedy assassination. Lee Harvey Oswald acted on his own to assassinate the president, and there was no conspiracy." (2) "There are still too many questions surrounding Kennedy's assassination to say that Lee Harvey Oswald acted by himself, or that there is not a larger conspiracy regarding the details of his death."

23. Younger voters, perhaps knowing less about the assassination, were not quite as firm in their beliefs. Only 11% strongly agreed that Oswald acted alone, while 41% strongly agreed that there were too many questions to claim there was no conspiracy. Of course, this is still a nearly 4-to-1 ratio in favor of the second statement among those with a strong opinion.

24. Note that the second statement in our polling query does not force people to conclude that a conspiracy existed, merely that there are "too many questions" lingering about the assassination to rule out the possibility (see note 22). In our view, this was a more realistic way to pose the choice.

25. Letter to the Author from Peter Hart and Geoff Garin, September 21, 2011, "Key Observations from the Focus Groups," Hart Research Associates, p. 1.

26. Ibid., 3.

27. Ibid., 9.

CONCLUSION: A FLAME ETERNAL?.

1. "The Sound of Silence," Paul Simon website.

http://www.paulsimon.com/us/music/paul-simon-songbook/sound-silence.

[accessed August 21, 2012].

2. "John F. Kennedy and the Press," John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum website,

http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/John-F-Kennedy-and-the-Press.aspx

[accessed January 28, 2013].

3. Only William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, James A. Garfield, Warren Harding, and Gerald Ford served fewer days in the White House than John Kennedy.

4. In response to a March 21, 1962, press conference question about the unhappiness expressed by some military personnel about their status, Kennedy cited the unfairness of life, the fact that some people are sick and others well, some servicemen were killed in war while others never leave the country, and so on. See John F. Kennedy, "The President's News Conference," March 21, 1962, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project,

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=8564

[accessed August 8, 2012].

5. E-mail from Ted Sorensen, October 22, 2010.

6. It is important to note that Kennedy was by no means the exception in an era when outlandish, dangerous sexual conduct was overlooked because it was categorized as "private life." The code of the times permitted even the CIA director, Allen Dulles, to have what his sister later described as a hundred or more affairs all over the world, with queens and commoners as he chose. Today's standards forced out CIA director David Petraeus after just a single affair in 2012. See Eleanor Lansing Dulles, Chances of a Lifetime: A Memoir (Engle-wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1980), and Stephen Kinzer, "When a C.I.A. Director Had Scores of Affairs," New York Times, November 10, 2012,

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/opinion/when-a-cia-director-had-scores-of-affairs.html?_r=1&

[accessed November 12, 2012].

7. See Bryan Bender, "A Dark Corner of Camelot," Boston Globe, January 23, 2011,

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/01/23/kennedy_family_limiting_access_to_rfk_documents/.

[accessed August 21, 2012].

8. Barack Obama of Illinois is the sole exception, and he was born in the Sunbelt's Hawaii. Gerald Ford of Michigan was never elected.

A Note on the Author.

Dr. Larry J. Sabato is the founder and director of the renowned Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. He is also the University Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, and has had visiting appointments at Oxford University and Cambridge University in Great Britain. A Rhodes scholar, he received his doctorate from Oxford, and is the author or editor of two dozen books on American politics, including The Rise of Political Consultants, Feeding Frenzy, A More Perfect Constitution, and Barack Obama and the New America. Dr. Sabato is a well-known election analyst who has appeared on television news shows hundreds of times. In 2013 Dr. Sabato won an Emmy for the documentary Out of Order, which he produced to highlight the dysfunctional U.S. Senate. He directs the Crystal Ball website, which has an unparalleled record of accuracy in predicting U.S. elections. Dr. Sabato has taught tens of thousands of students, and has received every major teaching award at the University of Virginia, which has also given him the university's highest honor, the Thomas Jefferson Award. For more information, go to www.centerforpolitics.org.

Ask the Author.

The Kennedy Half Century is accompanied by an innovative website, TheKennedyHalfCentury.com. Additional features and updates will be posted on the site frequently, and readers can e-mail questions and comments to the author.

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