Building the Perfect Candidate

This chapter explores Kennedy’s pre-presidential political career. By the end of World War II he had emerged as a well-connected Harvard graduate, author of a popular book, a decorated navy veteran of the Pacific War, and a budding young journalist with the Hearst chain. His political career began in 1946 when he was elected Representative for Massachusetts’s 11th Congressional District. In 1952 he was elected to the Senate, where he gained a reputation for sharp anti-colonial rhetoric that often targeted French policy. Throughout his pre-presidential political career, from 1946 to 1960, Kennedy’s most biting commentary was consistently reserved for the French in Vietnam and later Algeria. While Britain had negotiated its way out of India and later ran a successful counterinsurgency campaign against communist Malayan rebels, Kennedy worried openly that French colonial rule would drive the most rebellious of the Fourth Republic’s subjects toward the Sino-Soviet camp. Early postwar decolonization cemented Kennedy’s perception that the British were clear thinkers with long-term vision, while the French by contrast were characterized by a toxic mixture of short-sightedness, stubbornness, and indifference to the collective interests of the West.