Beschreibung:

KENNEDY, JOHN FITZGERALD, President . Typed manuscript, with extensive autograph corrections and revisions, of his speech at the Jackson-Jefferson Day dinner at Bristol, Virginia, 7 March 1958. 11 pages, 4to, typed on rectos only, paginated 1-2, 2A, 3-10, original typescripts except for pages 5, 7-10 (carbons), top corner of first leaf torn, neatly sewn with blue thread, blue cloth protective chemise, quarter morocco gilt slipcase. AN UNANNOUNCED PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE CONSIDERS FDR AND PREDICTS A DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN 1960 Kennedy, an as yet unannounced candidate for President in the 1960 elections, gives a nod to his party's local candidates and praises Virginia's Harry Byrd, then takes up larger issues to reflect on the nature of Presidential leadership as exemplified by two earlier Presidents, John Tyler and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Tyler he commends for resigning his Senate seat (to protest the deletion from the Congressional record of a resolution censuring Andrew Jackson an act which he regarded as unconstitutional) and Kennedy concludes that "...it is precisely that kind of courage and determination and leadership that we need throughout the country today..." The coming elections will be a challenge, he admits: "I do not say that victory will be easy. It will come to us only if we deserve it. We have to offer more than the old slogans and policies of the past. We have to offer more than charges we cannot prove or promises we cannot fulfill. We must prove our capacity for courageous leadership..." More reflectively, Kennedy was "reminded of this Democratic tradition" by a play he attended about Franklin D. Roosevelt, Sunrise at Campobello , which "brought to mind all the great qualities of leadership in times of crisis for which FDR was famous... We urgently need those qualities in Washington today, for this nation now enters a period of crisis of greater proportions than any we have ever endured...." Kennedy scoffs at the Eisenhower-Nixon administration: "those who come home to California to say reassuringly 'There is nothing wrong with the economy that a good dose of confidence won't cure.' In this same address, the Republican Vice-President -- Mr. Nixon -- said 'We are betting on prosperity to bring victory' for the Republicans in November. Let me say, my friends, that we in the Democratic party will accept that bet. "We want 'leadership alert and sensitive,' in Roosevelt's words, to the harsh changes occurring in the ecomony. That is necessarily the role of the Chief Executive in modern America. That is the role fulfilled by Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. That role is not being fulfilled today." After enumerating what he and his party can accomplish, Kennedy concludes that "we can go forward to a new and better America, never satisfied with things as they are, daring always to try the new, daring nobly and doing greatly. It is in this spirit that we meet here tonight. It is in this spirit that we will sweep the nation in 1958 and 1960."