Kennedy Library Launches Website
The Kennedy Presidential Library has launched a fabulous new website – http://www.jfk50.org/ – to mark the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of our 35th president – a half century ago this very day.
The site is organized by both subject matter and by a timeline of the Kennedy presidency. Take a minute to visit and walk through the historic events of 50 years ago. This is a great presentation of history and a remarkable use of the tools of modern communication.
Two words: great stuff.
And more…
Kennedy’s best biographer, Robert Dallek, has a great piece at the Salon website today. Dallek asks “why do we admire a president who did so little?”
His answer, in part, is to compare Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, two masters of communication.
Says Dallek: “Like T.R.’s bully pulpit and FDR’s fireside chats, Kennedy’s press conferences, which underscored his personal charm, wit, youth and intelligence, and Reagan’s talents as the ‘great communicator’ are enduring parts of their legacies.
“Unlike Washington and Lincoln, whose reputations rest respectively on building and preserving the nation, Kennedy and Reagan, to borrow a phrase from the historian Richard Hofstadter, were and remain the master psychologists of the middle classes.”