Senator John F. Kennedy, San Francisco, CA, International Airport, September 3rd, 1960

In 1952, we in this country had never heard of Nasser, or Castro, or Lumumba, or any of the others, and now they are household words and their efforts are not dedicated to the well-being of the United States. In the last 3 years three countries, formerly on the side of the West, have now passed into the area of Communist control.
In the last 3 weeks the Congo, newly independent, is now dominated by a Communist government. In the last 3 years, the Republic of Cuba, under a dictatorship of Batista, closely associated with the United States, with the American Ambassador, the second most powerful man in Havana, now finds itself a Communist satellite. This is the kind of foreign policy. This is the kind of image we have presented to a watching world. The United States looks tired. It looks like our brightest days have been in the past. It looks like the Communists are reaching for the future, and we sit back and talk about the ideals of the American Revolution. The way to put the ideals of the American Revolution into significance is to act on them, not to talk about them.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• JFK
• Campaigning
• California

[mikefan09]

great acting, but he believed it too

[jspecaspec23]

wow...

[heartlessvietboy]

Senator Kennedy seemed very angry that Communism has spread throughout pockets of the world in the past three years.

[0907oliv]

I think before this campaign was over that JFK came to the conclusion that he wanted to work with Lumumba. Lumumba actually sent him a congratulatory telegram after he was elected. He was upset when Lumumba was killled just before he (JFK) took office. There is a photo of JFK taken by Jacque Lowe at the moment JFK received a telephone call from Adlai Stevenson telling him that Lumumba had been assassinated. The photo is on the cover of the book JFK: Ordeal in Africa by Richard Mahoney.