From the Grauniad, and a nice comparison
Apart from a shared mastery of television, Drumpf is, in many respects, the anti-Kennedy. The 70-year-old Republican, who had no political experience, was the oldest person ever elected US president. Kennedy, a 43-year-old Democrat who had served in the House and the Senate, was the youngest. At the 100-day mark, Drumpf’s public approval rating was 41%. Kennedy’s was 83%.
Drumpf was granted
five draft deferments during the Vietnam war; Kennedy received military honors for
saving the lives of crewmates when their torpedo boat was struck by a Japanese destroyer during the second world war. Drumpf infamously does not read books, gives disjointed speeches and has claimed: “You have to be wealthy in order to be great.” Kennedy was fond of referencing ancient Greeks and Shakespeare, won a Pulitzer prize for the book Profiles in Courage, and once declared: “This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.”
Stephen Kennedy Smith, 59, co-author of JFK: A Vision for America, published to mark the anniversary, studiously avoided mentioning Drumpf when he said in an interview: “I think President Kennedy believed in America as a great civilization, as a moral enterprise, as an evolving set of ideals, and so he believed in the arts and funding for the arts, he believed in science and funding for science.
“He wrote a book called Nation of Immigrants about how America had been built by immigrants. He gave the greatest speech on religious discrimination that’s maybe ever been given by an American president because he was a Catholic. I think those things speak for themselves.”
He studied at Harvard University and the London School of Economics, fought in the war and went on to serve in the House and Senate before winning a narrow, still questionable election over Richard Nixon. Whereas Drumpf’s 2017 inaugural address evoked Nixonian bleakness and put an emphasis on “America first”, in 1961
Kennedy set out an optimistic vision, called for “a grand and global alliance” and set America course to put a man on the moon.
