Chapter 38

The razor-thin election of 1960 pitted youthful Democratic senator John F. Kennedy against Vice President Richard Nixon. Kennedy's poise in the first televised presidential debates and his promise to get the country "moving again" helped him narrowly prevail, becoming the youngest man ever elected president and the first Roman Catholic to hold the office.

Kennedy's inaugural address rang with Cold War idealism: "Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country." He labeled his domestic program the New Frontier, pledging to reinvigorate the economy, aid education, and provide medical care for the elderly.

Congress, dominated by a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats, blocked much of Kennedy's ambitious agenda. He did win passage of a modest increase in the minimum wage and a program of tax cuts, while also establishing the Peace Corps, sending idealistic young Americans abroad to assist developing nations.

Kennedy inherited a CIA plan, drafted under Eisenhower, to topple the communist regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba, who had aligned his revolutionary government with the Soviet Union. In April 1961 the CIA landed some 1,400 Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs, hoping to spark a popular uprising against Castro.

The invasion was a fiasco from the start. Promised American air support never fully materialized, Castro's forces were waiting, and the exile brigade was quickly overwhelmed and captured. The botched operation deeply embarrassed the new administration and pushed Castro even closer to Moscow.

The failure at the Bay of Pigs convinced Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev that Kennedy was inexperienced and could be pressed further. It also hardened American resolve to contain communism in the Western Hemisphere, setting the stage for an even graver showdown over Cuba the following year.

Kennedy publicly accepted responsibility for the debacle, but privately the episode taught him to be far more skeptical of military and intelligence advice—a lesson that would prove crucial during the far more dangerous crisis to come.

In October 1962 American U-2 spy planes photographed Soviet nuclear missile sites under construction in Cuba, within easy striking distance of American cities. Kennedy convened a secret executive committee (EXCOMM) of advisers to weigh the response, ultimately rejecting an air strike in favor of a naval quarantine (blockade) around the island.

For thirteen tense days the world edged toward nuclear war as Soviet ships approached the quarantine line. Behind the scenes, Kennedy and Khrushchev negotiated a resolution: the Soviets agreed to withdraw the missiles in exchange for a public American pledge not to invade Cuba, plus a secret promise to remove obsolete U.S. missiles from Turkey.

The crisis was the closest the Cold War came to nuclear catastrophe. Its resolution led both superpowers to install a "hotline" between Washington and Moscow and to sign the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, banning atmospheric nuclear testing.

On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas. Accused gunman Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested but was himself murdered two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, feeding decades of conspiracy theories about the killing.

The Warren Commission, appointed to investigate, concluded that Oswald had acted alone, though its findings have remained a subject of dispute ever since. Kennedy's sudden death, less than three years into his term, shocked the nation and left much of his New Frontier agenda unfinished.

Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, a masterful former Senate majority leader from Texas, was sworn in aboard Air Force One just hours after the shooting. Determined to honor Kennedy's memory, Johnson used his formidable legislative skill to push Kennedy's stalled proposals—especially a sweeping civil rights bill—through Congress.

Johnson quickly made the tragedy a mandate for action, declaring in his first address to Congress that "let us continue" the work Kennedy had begun. His long experience navigating the Senate gave him tools Kennedy had lacked for translating vision into law.

Elected in his own right in a landslide over conservative Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964, Johnson unveiled his vision of a "Great Society"—an ambitious expansion of the federal government's role in fighting poverty and inequality, which he considered even more sweeping than Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.

Central to this vision was the War on Poverty, launched through the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which created programs such as Head Start, the Job Corps, and VISTA (a domestic Peace Corps) to help the poor find education and employment.

In 1965 Johnson secured the creation of Medicare, providing federal health insurance for the elderly, and Medicaid, extending medical coverage to the poor. Congress also passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, funneling federal aid to public schools, and established the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Critics charged that the Great Society's programs were costly and only partially effective, and that funding for the War on Poverty would later be squeezed by the mounting expense of the Vietnam War. Still, the Great Society permanently expanded the American social safety net.

Under the moral leadership of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and organizations like the SCLC and SNCC, the civil rights movement pressed for an end to segregation through nonviolent protest—sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and mass demonstrations. In August 1963, some 250,000 people gathered for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

The moral pressure of the movement, combined with Johnson's political skill, produced the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and employment based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In March 1965 state troopers brutally attacked peaceful marchers on "Bloody Sunday" as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Televised images of the violence galvanized national support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which banned literacy tests and authorized federal oversight of elections in areas with a history of discrimination. Not all activists agreed on strategy or aims—Malcolm X and the later Black Power movement rejected King's integrationist, nonviolent approach in favor of Black self-determination and, if necessary, self-defense.

Kennedy had sent thousands of American "military advisers" to prop up the shaky South Vietnamese government against communist Vietcong guerrillas backed by North Vietnam. After an alleged attack on American destroyers in August 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving Johnson sweeping authority to wage war in Southeast Asia without a formal declaration of war.

Johnson used that authority to dramatically escalate American involvement. He launched Operation Rolling Thunder, a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam, and steadily increased the number of American ground troops, which swelled from roughly 23,000 in 1964 to more than 500,000 by 1968.

Despite the massive commitment of troops and firepower, the war settled into a grinding stalemate against an elusive guerrilla enemy who blended into the countryside and enjoyed support from China and the Soviet Union. American casualties mounted steadily, and the draft touched millions of families at home.

In January 1968, during the Vietnamese lunar new year holiday, communist forces launched the massive, coordinated Tet Offensive, striking dozens of South Vietnamese cities and even the U.S. embassy in Saigon. American and South Vietnamese forces eventually repelled the attacks and inflicted crippling losses on the Vietcong.

Militarily, Tet was a defeat for the communists. Politically, however, it was a disaster for the Johnson administration: television images of the fighting shattered official claims that the war was nearly won and convinced many Americans, including formerly supportive elites, that the conflict was unwinnable.

The credibility gap between government optimism and battlefield reality fueled a surge of antiwar sentiment. Facing plunging approval ratings and a strong primary challenge, a stunned President Johnson announced in March 1968 that he would not seek reelection, choosing instead to pursue peace negotiations with Hanoi.

Tet marked the psychological turning point of the war, after which American strategy gradually shifted from escalation toward a slow, painful search for a way out of Vietnam.

Alongside the political upheaval, a youthful counterculture rejected mainstream American values of materialism and conformity. "Hippies" experimented with communal living, rock music, and mind-altering drugs, while a broader, more mainstream antiwar movement staged massive protests and "teach-ins" against the Vietnam War on college campuses across the country.

The year 1968 brought shock after shock. In April, an assassin murdered Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, triggering riots in cities nationwide. Two months later, Robert F. Kennedy, the late president's brother and a leading Democratic presidential candidate, was assassinated in Los Angeles moments after winning the California primary.

That August, the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago descended into chaos as police clashed violently with antiwar demonstrators outside the hall while a bitterly divided party nominated Hubert Humphrey inside. The turbulence of 1968 left many Americans exhausted and yearning for order, paving the way for Republican Richard Nixon's narrow victory that November.