John F. Kennedy: Exclusive Photos - LIFE Magazine

The captions are as fascinating as the photos:
In the July 25, 1960 issue of LIFE, the magazine reported on JFK's nomination as the Democratic nominee in terms that left little doubt that a formidable figure -- and not some mere Harvard pretty boy -- had arrived for good on the national scene. Of Jack and his 34-year-old brother and campaign manager, Robert, the magazine wrote: "Steam-rolling the crafty old pros of the party with ruthless efficiency, they brought a new era of American politics and delivered the Democratic party to a brand-new and youthful set of owners and operators.... The older pros, resentful of [JFK's] methods and his success, had argued that he was too young and unseasoned. But their argument failed against a towering fact: Kennedy had the magic essential for a candidate, the ability to get votes."

Kennedy's campaign, symbolically as well as in substance, offered as vivid a choice between two candidates as America's ever faced. Only four years older than Kennedy, Richard Nixon -- Vice President for two successive terms under Eisenhower -- seemed not only of another generation, but by 1960 almost of another century. The driving ethos of JFK's campaign could be summed up in one word: Forward! Nixon's, on the other hand, might as well have been, Now, hold on a minute. Not so fast. "If we open a quarrel between the present and the past," Kennedy said at the convention, quoting Winston Churchill, "we shall be in danger of losing the future. Today our concern must be with that future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do."

In 1960 the universal sense, among voters as well as the media, seemed to be that the world was spinning a bit faster, and Kennedy was a man -- or was the representative of a generation -- who moved, thought, and acted at that same thrilling, daunting speed. "One could argue," Norman Mailer wrote in Esquire, "and one may argue this yet, [that the Democratic convention in July] was one of the most important conventions in America’s history, and could prove conceivably to be the most important. The man it nominated was unlike any politician who had ever run for President in the history of the land, and if elected he would come to power in a year when America was in danger of drifting into a profound decline."

sounds like what we need, what we hoped for in Obama, and what we may yet see.

http://www.life.com/image/ugc1141131/in-gallery/51881/jfk-unpublished-never-seen...

awesome never seen before photo's

The President and his son, John F. Kennedy Jr.