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The Kennedy Doctrine

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The Kennedy Doctrine

This paper discusses the Presidency of John Fitzgerald Kennedy from the perspective of charismatic leadership. Specifically, it addresses the four characteristics that social scientists have agreed lead to such leadership and their relation to the 1961-1963 Kennedy Presidency: a crisis situation, potential followers in distress, an aspiring leader, and a doctrine promising deliverance. This paper shows that all four of these characteristics apply to Kennedy, and demonstrates their causality of his charismatic leadership persona, which endured long past (and perhaps in part because of) his assassination in 1963. The United States was in a state of controlled turmoil. Unknown dangers were threatened from enemies abroad, while moral concerns further eroded confidence at home. The nation was emerging from a decade of paranoia and fear stirred up by certain high-ranking members of the federal government. In this election year, a Democratic Senator would become one of the youngest men ever elected to the office of President of the United States of America in a historically barrier-breaking election. No, the year is not 2008, and the President is not Barack Obama. Instead, turning the calendars back to 1960 brings us the year that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected the thirty-fifth President of the United States of America, the youngest man ever elected to the office, as well as being the only Roman Catholic to ever hold the highest position in the nation. Social scientists have largely agreed on four basic characteristics common to the situations of all charismatic leaders. First and foremost, there must be a crisis situation, which leads to the second requirement, a potential group of followers who are in distress, presumably due to the crisis situation at hand. Third, the leader who steps into this

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