Betting on America

Chapter 8. A NATIONAL AND PERSONAL AGENDA

	Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
	--President John F. Kennedy, 1961

When President Kennedy said those words at his inauguration on January 20, 1961, the United States was in the midst of the Cold War. Fidel Castro and Cuba, just 90 miles off the shores of America, was a hotbed of Communism; China seemed destined to dominate Asia; the Soviet Union and the U.S. hovered on the brink of nuclear disaster. In his thousand days in office, Kennedy approved an invasion of Cuba, nearly experienced World War III during the Cuban Missile Crisis, ...