JFK, the forever-young president, 100 years on - By E.J. Dionne Jr.

By E.J. Dionne Jr. Opinion writer May 28 at 7:26 PM

We cannot imagine John F. Kennedy on his 100th?birthday. For all of us, he will always be a man in his 40s, exuding the vigor that became one of his trademark words, pronounced in his distinctively New England way.

He was a student of history whose rhetoric gloried in the future, challenge and change. He became an icon even though he was an iconoclast. He could be coldly realistic, but he preached idealism. He honored intellectuals but mistrusted abstract thinking and ideology. He promised greater affluence but preached against complacency.

He was a fervent Cold Warrior whose most important triumphs came in the name of peace. He avoided nuclear holocaust during the Cuban missile crisis and negotiated a partial nuclear test-ban treaty with the Soviet Union. He took office with a muscular promise that the United States would “pay any price, bear any burden” in the battle for freedom. But five months before his death, he became a prophet of what would be called detente, describing peace as “the necessary, rational end of rational men.”

There was also the contrast between the organizing slogans of his Democratic forebears and his own. Woodrow Wilson’s “New Freedom” and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” were rooted in broad but specific objectives. Kennedy’s “New Frontier” was more journey than goal, more temperament and disposition than program or wish list. He was a restless figure in a restless time.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jfk-the-forever-young-president-100-years-on/2017/05/28/f62ac0f2-4188-11e7-9869-bac8b446820a_story.html