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[Kennedy]
In your hands, my fellow citizens...

...more than mine...

...will rest the final success
or failure of our cause.

[narrator] John Fitzgerald Kennedy
was the 35th president

of the United States.

He was the young, handsome leader,
who promised a new hope.

[Kennedy] The torch has been passed
to a new generation of Americans

born in this century.

[narrator] A modern politician
for a modern America.

[Kennedy] Ask not what
your country can do for you,

ask what you can do for your country.

[crowd cheers]

[on radio] It's the president's car.

Another car directly
behind the presidential car,

secret servicemen
spread-eagled over them, we don't know...

[narrator] However the life of JFK
is so often defined by his death.

[news reader] The president
of the United States is dead.

[narrator] His assassination
in November 1963

came to be seen as
a turning point for the US.

A shift from an age of innocence
to one of violence and change.

JFK himself was transformed
from man into legend.

[man #1]
This young, handsome, intelligent,

terrifically photogenic,
but honest political leader

was a breath of fresh air
on the political scene.

[man #2] I can't think of any other leader
in a western democratic context,

who developed such a fantastic image.

[man #3] For a college boy
to give his brand label,

to invent a new way of being a politician
and a new kind of marketed politics,

this was revolutionary.

[narrator] This reading
of history can disguise

the fascinating
and contradictory man behind the myth.

[man #1] Jack Kennedy
never performed very well at school.

He was clearly gifted, but he really
scraped by in his final grades.

He was the walking text book of illnesses.

It's astonishing he survived childhood.

[man #1] People sometimes assumed
that it was almost accidental

that JFK happened
to have been in Berlin in 1939,

a few days before the declaration of war,

that he'd been to Palestine,
that he'd been to Indochina,

but it's clear from the diaries he kept,

that was what excited him

about the study of politics.

[woman] There's this quality
of hope and admiration and optimism

that he projected
that really inspired people,

and something about his personality

that continues
to interest and engage people.

[narrator] JFK was recognized by millions,
but known by few.

This program
will explore the making of a president.

Born in Massachusetts
on the 29th May 1917,

John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
known familiarly as Jack,

was the second son of multi-millionaire
investor and politician Joe Kennedy.

[man #1] Jack Kennedy
was born into a Boston-Irish family.

It was a middle-class family without
any particular political pretentions.

The father working in banking,

and a mother who actually came from
a political family, a Democratic family.

Her father had been the Mayor of Boston.

[man #2] Rose Kennedy's father,
John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald

was a real force
in Massachusetts politics.

He was elected to Congress three times.

He was elected Mayor of Boston,

and Edward Kennedy would say
in later years,

one of the reasons the Kennedys were
always strong in Massachusetts politically

was because of Honey Fitzgerald,
the maternal grandfather.

[man #3] They had a grand home
in Hyannis Port on Cape Cod.

They had a home in Palm Beach, Florida.

It was a life of prep schools,
of luxury, of tennis courts,

although really living
in a kind of bubble.

Very, very far removed
from the mass of the American people.

It was kind of like being
a European aristocrat,

which is essentially what he was.

[narrator] Having attended
various local elementary schools,

Jack Kennedy's secondary education
formally started at a Catholic school,

but it soon became apparent
he was unhappy there.

It was decided that he switch and follow
his brother to Choate Rosemary Hall,

a private prep school in Connecticut.

Although the school is thought
to be the inspiration

for the famous "Ask not what
your country can do for you" speech,

Jack was no happier here
than he was at his previous school.

One thing Choate did have though,
was his brother, Joe Kennedy Junior,

but where his brother
seemingly excelled, Jack did not.

[woman] His older brother
is already at Choate

and he's kind of the golden boy.

He's doing fantastically well,
he's on all the sports teams,

he's a very diligent student.

Jack Kennedy isn't really
a diligent student at this point.

He's a little bit badly behaved.

[Hamilton] He was clearly
very smart and very lazy,

and not only lazy,
he didn't seem to want to excel.

[White] He was bright, he was charming.

He had some interest in history
and in biography and he did read

but he was a rather indolent student,

and at his prep school he ended up
graduating 65th out of 110,

so that's about midway,
in fact below halfway in the class.

If you look at his academic record,
it's far less impressive

than say Richard Nixon's.

[Charnock] He chafes at the discipline
of the Choate School

and he organizes a club among
his friends called the Muckers' Club,

sort of essentially designed
to break school rules.

[Hamilton] He was in fact expelled
to begin with, but his father pleaded

he should be kept at school,
but he was required to sit down

with a psychologist,
and the psychologist said,

"Jack, you seem to do
very well in your classes,

but you don't try very hard.
What is going on?"

And he came up with a brilliant answer,
and he said,

"Well, my brother does very well,
why should I be doing the same?

He does it all for me."

[narrator] Jack's childhood
was in many ways a fortunate one,

but he was plagued by illness.

Long stretches of bed rest
and prolonged courses

of heavy medication began in childhood.

This would set the blueprint
for the rest of his life.

[Charnock] As a young child, he'd had
a very bad case of scarlet fever.

There was a huge outbreak
in Boston at the time.

His father
and his grandfather, Honey Fitz,

had to pull strings to get him
into the best hospital in Boston.

[Hamilton] He was continually ill either
in the school sanatorium or in hospital.

And worse still was the fact that
very rarely were they able to diagnose

what was wrong with him.

[O'Shaughnessy] It meant
he had long periods off school.

There was not only the scarlet fever,
there was the pneumonia,

there was the asthma.

He had major spinal problems.

He was born with one leg
slightly shorter than the other,

and this created
a long term problem with his back,

and it never leaves him that problem,
it's always there.

[Hamilton] I think what's remarkable
is he wanted to enjoy

the health that others had.

He developed a jokey sort of heroism,
if you like,

that he was coping
with what for normal people

would be considered
life-threatening diseases,

but just wouldn't take them seriously.

[White] It's interesting
to speculate on the impact

of his very severe health problems
on his mentality,

and I think what it left him with
was a "live for the moment" mentality.

I think there was part of Kennedy thought,
"I'm not going to be around for long,

so I may as well enjoy myself
as much as I can while I can."

[narrator] There were underappreciated
depths to the younger Kennedy boy,

which many overlooked.

He used his frequent bouts
of illness to read,

developing his mind and imagination

through the works of Robert Louis
Stevenson, Winston Churchill and others.

Although academically
he was just getting by,

his self-education was invaluable.

As both Jack and his brother matured,

their father would instill a rivalry
within them both,

which the businessman, Joe Senior,
evidently thrived off.

The Kennedys had to excel at everything.

They had to excel at sport, at academe,
in debating, in writing, in literature.

This family, in other words,
were being turned into a brand,

groomed for success.

[Hamilton] The father
had such high expectations of them

and he put them under so much pressure,

but also there was a certain degree
of sexual competition going on.

Both of the two older boys
were extremely handsome,

they brought home lots of girlfriends,

and the father openly
not only flirted with the girlfriends,

but propositioned them.

[White] He wasn't just
a philanderer of spectacular proportions,

he was also completely open about it.

His sons knew about it, and the advice
he apparently gave his sons was:

"You need to get laid
as often as possible."

Also with his affairs,
he was open about it,

and so that's something
he passed on to the sons,

including John Kennedy.

[O'Shaughnessy] The good side
is that Joe Kennedy

took an acute interest
in all his children.

In that sense, he was a good father,
because remember in that generation

among the elite,
both American and British,

fathers would
often neglect their children.

They'd maroon them in boarding schools,

they'd take no interest in them,

whereas Joe Kennedy took an aggressive
interest in the lives of his children.

[narrator] Jack would complete
his studies at Choate,

and although his grades
were nothing special,

he still managed
to gain entry into Harvard.

But it would be that summer where
the real education of Jack Kennedy began.

Coinciding with his father's appointment
to the ambassadorship to Britain,

Jack would begin a number of trips
to 1930s Europe.

The political tensions and shifting
of power fascinated this young American.

He would witness some of the 20th
century's most historic events firsthand.

These visits would inform his future
in ways he could never imagine.

The first trip to Europe
that Jack Kennedy took was in 1937.

He and a school friend,
Lem Billings, sailed from the US

taking Jack's sports car with them,
and spent ten weeks driving around Europe.

The following year in 1938,
Joe Kennedy Senior

was appointed US ambassador
to the United Kingdom

by President Roosevelt.

Jack again made a trip to Europe,

but this time
it wasn't explicitly for pleasure.

He traveled to England to work
in the embassy,

where he would get his first taste
of the inner workings of politics.

[O'Shaughnessy] This showed him
the international scene

of global high politics,
and what could follow from them.

It was an extraordinary kind of education,

because his father
had not only a front row seat,

but his father had a unique position
in relation to the government

of British Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain.

So we're not just talking
about any ambassador's son.

Joe Kennedy was at the vortex
of European events in the late 1930s

and he was a major actor on that scene.

[Hamilton] It was while Jack was there
that he became fascinated

by the rearmament
that was going on in England

and the growing rise
of fascism on the continent.

[O'Shaughnessy] It gave him extraordinary
insight into the nature of Hitler,

the nature of charisma.

It was an extraordinary
kind of tutelage, if you like,

into the power of propaganda,
because he saw, unlike historians,

that this whole regime
was about propaganda,

the whole thing was driven

by the most brilliant levels of
propaganda history had ever seen.

[narrator] The year after, he would
travel to Europe for a third time.

This time, however,
he did not stay in London.

He traveled to the Middle East,
the Soviet Union, and the Balkans

to research for this final-year thesis.

He then went
to Czechoslovakia and Germany.

What he witnessed
was Europe on the brink of war.

He left Berlin on September 1st, 1939,
the day Germany invaded Poland.

[Charnock] I think this trip
had a lasting influence on him

in the sense that he was someone
who truly believed in being there.

He was very interested
in political history,

that's what he wanted to study,
and he wanted to see it firsthand.

[O'Shaughnessy] He realized Europe
was on the verge of meltdown.

He wanted to educate himself
onto the global scene.

This was the best
and most practical way of doing it.

[Charnock] Kennedy has a faith
in his own judgment

and his own perception,
and being there on the ground,

traveling around,
becomes a motif of his political career.

[Hamilton] Here was an opportunity where
he could actually visit these countries,

simply with his passport
and a letter from his father

as the United States ambassador
to Britain.

[narrator] Jack returned home
and started to write his dissertation.

Thanks to his father, it would be a work

which would live beyond the realms
of his Harvard studies.

[Hamilton] The idea was
to see how slow Britain had been

to recognize the threat of Germany.

His professors were
very laudatory, really,

because, after all, it was unusual
for a student to be able to have

such firsthand information.

It was shown to a friend of Jack's father,

who worked at The New York Times,
Arthur Krock,

and he said: "You know,
this is an awfully good dissertation.

This would make a book."

[White] In the summer of 1940,
John Kennedy's first book

Why England Slept is published.

By the spring of '41, it sold something
like 80,000 copies in America and Britain,

although there is the rumor
that his father bought 30,000 copies

and stored them
at his home in Hyannis Port.

[Hamilton] For the United States,
which was still a neutral country,

but looking
at what was happening in Europe,

this seemed almost like a wake-up call.

[White] It establishes
a key component of his image,

which is that he is a man of letters,

and this is someone
who is an authentic intellectual,

who publishes books.

It's also important,
because it furnishes the cornerstone

of his foreign-policy ideology.

You want to understand what John Kennedy
says about foreign policy in the Cold War,

if you want to understand
his foreign policy during his presidency,

you can still learn a lot about it
by reading Why England Slept.

[narrator] For Jack, the book seemed
to be a turning point in his life.

Up until now, he had lived in the shadow
of his more able older brother.

The attack on Pearl Harbor
made the war a global concern,

and like many families, the Kennedys
were not immune to its effect.

The political life of Joe Senior
would be the first casualty.

[Hamilton] As ambassador, he began
to see himself more and more

as the peacemaker of Europe,

that he could do a deal,
he could get the British Prime Minister

and the Führer together around a table

and that somehow he would
be able to make it all come right.

When it turned out
that he had misunderstood Hitler,

when it was obvious that Britain
was standing alone...

...Joseph Kennedy lost faith in Britain.

[O'Shaughnessy] He had very much
the businessman's fix-it mentality.

He really didn't understand
all this blood-and-soil mystical stuff.

He thought you could do deals,
you could pay them.

[White] That becomes
a controversial position

and unpopular with the British people,
and he becomes an embarrassment.

This is why,
often in JFK's later campaigns,

although Joseph Kennedy
pulls the strings behind the scenes,

he's often not out there in public,
so by 1941, his political career is over.

[Hamilton] The US president wasn't
even using his ambassador to London,

because he didn't think
Joseph Kennedy was right,

and he didn't think the prime minister of
Britain, Neville Chamberlain, was right.

The President believed
that Winston Churchill

had the makings of the one person
who could stand up to Hitler,

and that left Joseph Kennedy
out in the cold.

[narrator] Despite his ongoing ill health,

Jack was eager to sign up
for the US forces.

Securing a doctor's certificate,
he managed to enroll in the Navy

just before the Pearl Harbor attack.

Jack was thirsty for action,

but his health meant he was stationed
at a desk in Washington,

working in Naval Intelligence.

It was during this time
that he would the first and, arguably,

the greatest love of his life, Inga Arvad.

He met this beautiful Danish woman,

who was seven years older
than him, Inga Arvad.

This is one of the few times in his life
where he's very emotionally involved.

I think it's partly physical attraction.
She's very beautiful, and she's worldly.

[Hamilton] She was a journalist
in Washington

and pretty much everybody
she interviewed fell in love with her,

including Jack Kennedy,
but she was drawn to him.

He'd been to Europe, so he had
a feeling for her as a European.

He was fascinated by politics,

and the fact that
she had interviewed Hitler and Goering

before she left Europe,
that made her very special in his eyes.

[O'Shaughnessy] The trouble is
that Adolf Hitler adored her.

The Führer had said that she was
the ideal Aryan woman.

She was really seen in Washington
as a kind of Mata Hari and she was feared.

[narrator] Her ties to Hitler and the Nazi
elite meant the FBI were observing her.

Private conversations and liaisons
between her and Jack were recorded.

No one, it seemed, approved of the affair.

[Charnock] His family, she's not exactly
wife material in their view:

she's not Catholic, twice divorced.

But also his superiors
in Naval Intelligence

are concerned about
this young Naval Intelligence officer

caught up in a passionate relationship
with this beautiful woman,

who we're not sure if she may be is a spy.

He was crazily in love with this woman,

told his father he was going to marry her.
The father said: "No, you can't."

And finally the father
spoke to Inga and said:

"Listen you are never going to marry
my son, get that out of your mind.

This cannot be.
You will get locked up, so back off."

That put an end to the relationship.

He admitted to somebody I interviewed

that she was the love of his life,
but it was not to be.

[narrator] Although his father was
against him entering naval combat,

Joe Senior did end up
eventually facilitating his son's wish.

Jack became
the pilot of a patrol torpedo boat.

These boats
were small and ready for combat.

It's unclear if the guilt of ending
the affair with Inga

caused Joe Senior to change his mind,
but he made sure Jack's boat

was always out of hostile waters.

However, an unexpected show
of aggression from the Japanese

around the Solomon Islands meant Jack
would eventually come under attack.

The war would have bittersweet
consequences for the Kennedy family.

Although tragedy would strike in Europe,
honors would flow at home.

On the night of August 1st, 1943,

while performing routine patrols
with two other PT boats,

Jack spotted an enemy ship.

Before he could react and attack,
his boat was rammed

and sliced in two
by the Japanese destroyer.

[Charnock] It's the middle of the night,
they don't have proper radar,

they don't have
good physical sighting at that point.

And ultimately, his boat
is actually stove in two.

Some of his crew members
are killed instantly,

but some of them survive
and they're in the waters,

and Jack Kennedy
is able to rescue some of them.

[White] He performs heroically.

Using a belt in his mouth,
he tows a crew member

three and a half miles to an island.

[Charnock] This is a man
who has extensive health problems,

has extreme back problems.

He swims for five hours
to get those men to safety.

[Hamilton] Nine of the men survived.

They managed to swim
to this literally desert island

to stay there until Jack Kennedy
arranged through a local native

to get out a coconut with a message,

saying they were still alive,
and they were finally rescued.

[Charnock] His older brother
has always been better than him at school.

There was a competitive dynamic
between these two brothers,

and Joe Junior maybe feels
that he needs to prove himself even more.

He's already gone above and beyond,

and then maybe because of the heroics
of his younger brother,

maybe out of his own sense of
duty and service,

he actually volunteers
for a very dangerous mission

to bomb a German airbase in Belgium.

[O'Shaughnessy] No one
is ever compelled to go on a mission

where the probability
is that he will lose his life.

Essentially, he became
an American kamikaze.

They were wiring up bombers,
filling them with explosives,

to attack the V-rocket emplacements
in Occupied Europe.

[narrator] The mission failed.
The bombs exploded onboard the plane

before it reached its target.

Joe Kennedy Junior
was still onboard and died instantly.

For the whole Kennedy family,
this was a tragic loss.

Whilst Jack was still coming
to terms with his brother's death,

word was beginning to spread
about his heroic actions in the Pacific.

[White] A writer for Life Magazine
called John Hersey

approaches Kennedy and says: "I'd like
to write an article on what you've done

for the New Yorker magazine."
Joseph Kennedy, working behind the scenes,

gets it republished with Reader's Digest.

A large number of people in 1944
read this vivid account

of John Kennedy's bravery in World War II.

So, 1940 was Why England Slept,
the idea of him as an intellectual,

a man of letters, of cultural
sophistication, that idea's established.

With the service in World War II,

a second element in his image
is established,

which is that he's a war hero.

So what you have is the idea
that he has brains and brawn.

[Hamilton] People have speculated
that it was just the death

of the older brother
that pushed JFK into politics.

That is nonsense.

The fact is, from the FBI records,
JFK was talking about going into politics

and even going as far as the presidency

way back at the time of Pearl Harbor,
in his conversations with Inga Arvad.

To the extent that the brother
might have been in the way,

but the fact
that he had been killed opened the way

for JFK to accept
the family mantle, if you like,

and the father was willing to fund it.

[narrator] After the PT boat incident,
Jack was left with chronic back issues

and he was
honorably discharged from the Navy.

His brother was dead,
and his father's political career over.

He found employment as a journalist,

but the question about
what he should do next lingered.

It was then decided
that Jack would run for Congress in 1946.

Again, Joe Senior would be
instrumental in making this happen.

[Charnock] He will run for Congress,
and his father helps make that happen

by inducing a local Democratic congressman
to vacate his seat

and run for Mayor of Boston instead.

It's not a shoo-in
for Jack Kennedy though.

He doesn't necessarily
have strong ties in the community.

So they have to start
really building connections in Boston.

[White] Behind the scenes, Joseph Senior
is spending huge amounts of money.

The typical amount of money
for a Congressional candidate in 1946

would have been something like $25,000.

Estimates are that Joe Kennedy
spent at least ten times that amount,

at least a quarter of million,
maybe half a million.

[Hamilton] What JFK understood
was the imagery of politics

would transform the business.

His father was an expert in that field,
so between the two of them,

were able to change the course
of American politicking and campaigning.

[White] Joseph Kennedy
hired two advertising agencies

to promote Kennedy's campaign.

So these advertising agencies
would contact the media,

they would polish his speeches.

He even hired a billboard specialist,

who put up 90 billboards
around the city in Boston,

and so it's an incredibly slick campaign.

[Hamilton] The fact
that he was facing such ill health

did make him aware
that he could project an image

that could cover that up.

He had a certain shyness,
a certain modesty,

which allowed him on camera

to come across as youthful, handsome,

thoughtful, compassionate.

And all those things were genuine.

[narrator] The campaigning paid off,
and in November 1946,

John F Kennedy won the seat
of the 11th district of Massachusetts.

But he soon realized that the life
of a congressman

might not be all that he'd expected.

[White] Now, the truth was
as a congressman he wasn't impressive.

He was quite lazy, he used
to party a lot, he was also ill a lot,

and he often wasn't there, but he didn't
have an outstanding reputation

when he was
in the House of Representatives.

[O'Shaughnessy]
Actually, he found it very boring

to pursue the interests
of working-class Bostonians.

To defend their rights
was an honorable activity,

but ultimately, it was
the world stage which interested him.

It was
the great questions of war and peace.

It was the macro struggle
between communism and democracy,

because he saw things
on a global template,

not just the little workings
of the internal parish.

[narrator] Jack served six years
as a congressman

before turning his sights on the Senate.

[Hamilton] His intent, I think, always,
was to go for a Senate seat,

but, of course, he was very young.

In a state like Massachusetts,
it was going to be a huge battle,

and many people said: "Don't try."

[Charnock] They decide that this is
the time to run for the US Senate

and he'll be running
against Henry Cabot Lodge.

[White] That campaign was run
in a kind of modern, slick way,

and what's also important to note
is that in the campaign against Lodge,

Kennedy's views on foreign policy,
on the Cold War,

were probably more hardline than Lodge's,

and probably a good many people,
including some Republicans,

voted for Kennedy in '52, because
they thought he would be more hardline

on the Cold War than Henry Cabot Lodge.

[Hamilton] The family recognized
that they had a star,

and that actually people
would like to meet the star

and shake hands. It was very effective.

[White] Like the '46 campaign,
the 1952 campaign for the Senate

highlighted Kennedy's appeal
as a sex symbol.

There's a lot of talk
of his physical attractiveness,

and also his appeal
as a symbol of the family.

The 1952 Senate campaign
is most famous for the teas

held by his mother
and his sisters for women.

It's estimated something like 70,000 women

attended those teas, which coincidentally
was his winning margin.

He defeated Lodge by 70,000 votes,

and this might seem
an extravagant statement,

but I think it's defensible,
that more than any other politician

in American history,
Kennedy symbolized family life,

because he's seen
as a representative of a dynasty.

[narrator] John F Kennedy's image
was something

that had been worked on and honed.

He was the academic, the war hero,
the family man,

and thanks to the tea parties,
older women wanted to mother him,

and younger women wanted to marry him.

Before his Senate victory, though,
his reputation as a playboy

was becoming problematic.

His father agreed
that what Jack needed was a wife.

[Charnock] When John F Kennedy
runs for the US Senate, he's a bachelor.

He's obviously had a lot of relationships
with women over the years,

but he's never gotten married,

and he enters the US Senate in 1953
as a single man.

There's an article
in the Saturday Evening Post headlined

"The Senate's Gay Young Bachelor"

and there's
a lot made of his marital status.

Now, at that time, he'd actually
already met Jackie Bouvier.

They'd been introduced at a dinner party
in Georgetown by a mutual friend.

[White] There was
strong mutual attraction.

There was an article in Life Magazine
in the summer of 1953

with the headline
"Senator Kennedy goes a-courting"

and a picture of him
and Jackie Kennedy on a sailboat.

And it's a very glamorous image,
so it's a private matter,

but it also affects JFK's image.

[O'Shaughnessy]
Jackie Kennedy had unique gifts.

She was a remarkable woman,
highly intelligent, highly insightful.

A very, very good foil to him.

Similarly, they'd both come
from troubled backgrounds.

Her father had been a chronic alcoholic,
her parents divorced when she was 12,

so there was a kind of
mutual sympathy, a mutual understanding.

[Charnock] It's unclear
if Jack wanted to get married,

if he really saw himself
as a marrying man.

Certainly, he appreciated
freedom in his romantic life,

but it's his father that basically
with a bit of political calculation says:

"Being the Senate's gay young bachelor
won't cut it for very long,

and if you want to be president,
you have to have a family,

and you have to have a wife
and the political image is important."

And Jackie Bouvier
fits all of those criteria

for being a political wife,

and a political wife
to a prominent Catholic politician.

[O'Shaughnessy] He had always built up
the family as a brand.

Remember in those days,
most men were married at 22.

To be unmarried at 35
raised certain questions.

Were you a serial philanderer?

In this case, true.

So it kind of, if you like,
embourgeoisified the Kennedy label.

They were anything but bourgeois,
they were very wealthy bohemians,

but this turned it into something
much more palatable,

much more acceptable.

You can't have a king without a queen,

you can't have a prince
without a princess, and here she came.

[narrator] Jack and Jackie
married on September 12th, 1953

at St. Mary's Church,
Newport, Rhode Island.

The young senator
was no longer a bachelor.

From the outset,
the marriage was troubled,

both parties conducting illicit affairs,

but the thing they both worked towards
and understood was the image.

Projecting the notion of
a happily married couple was paramount.

She was pretty perfect
in terms of the senator's wife

and the prospective
presidential nominee's wife,

but as to their actual relationship,

I think the honest truth
from all the people

who were very close to them
was that this was not a love relationship.

An interesting thing
about the relationship

is that she was aware of his womanizing.

[O'Shaughnessy] It was known
within his close circle

and increasingly known more widely.

What really happened is
that people turned a blind eye to it.

They didn't want to know.

[Hamilton] In terms of the marital drama,
it was always on a knife edge

and there is no doubt that Jackie
was on the point of divorcing.

[Charnock] There's stories that
she even approached Joe Kennedy

and said that
she was contemplating a divorce

and it's Joe that patches that over
and says:

"Do what you need to do. Spend
what you need to do," to some extent,

"to make you happy
and to stay in this marriage,"

because the symbolism
and the qualities that Jackie Kennedy

brought to her public life
were so valuable, and he saw that value,

and he knows that without her
Jack's political career is ruined.

[White] Prior to his marriage,
his sexual appeal was seen as

an exciting attribute of his bachelorhood.

After his marriage, it's seen
as an attribute of this marriage

to this glamorous, beautiful woman.

There are a lot of magazines
in the mid and late '50s

that have them on the cover,
long before he reaches the White House.

So she adds to his sexual appeal.

[narrator] The Kennedy brand was set
and it was the 1956 Democratic Convention

that threw it into
the national consciousness.

[crowd cheers]

I give you the next Democratic nominee,
our next president of the United States,

Adlai E Stevenson.

[narrator] Jack's televised speech
gained so many supporters

that he nearly found himself
as the running mate of Adlai Stevenson.

Had he won, his future presidential hopes
would most certainly have been dashed.

The Democrats lost
heavily in the '56 elections

and Kennedy would continue
working in the Senate.

The convention proved one thing, however,
John F Kennedy connected.

Who he was, his image,
all resonated with an audience,

who eagerly consumed what was
fed to them via televisual broadcast.

On January 2nd, 1960,
Jack began his campaign

for the Democratic nomination.

That November, he would face
Vice-President Richard Nixon

for the White House
in what was shaping up

to be one of
the tightest races in history,

but Kennedy's religion remained
a potential issue

for the American electorate.

[White] In a way, the biggest issue
that Kennedy has to deal with in 1960

is the religious issue
of his own Catholic faith.

No Catholic had ever
been elected president.

Some Americans felt a Catholic president
might owe their allegiance to Rome,

to the Pope and to the Catholic faith,
rather than to the United States

and the American constitution.

This is a major issue
Kennedy has to deal with,

and I think initially
he'd rather not talk about it.

By the time they get to the West Virginia
primary in the spring of 1960,

he decides to tackle it head on.

[Charnock] He gives a speech before

the Ministerial Association
of Greater Houston.

This is an organization
of Protestant ministers.

He gives a speech to say: 'I'm not
a Catholic candidate for president,

I am the Democratic candidate
for president who happens to be Catholic."

So he essentially challenges
this long-standing concern

that Catholics have dual loyalties
in the political sphere,

and it's the watershed moment
in terms of religious discussions

in American political campaigns.

[White] It adds another element to this
multifaceted image he'd been developing,

and that is the idea
of Kennedy as a man of faith.

The whole debate
over Kennedy's religion in 1960

is based on the idea that
his Catholic faith was important to him.

[narrator] Still no one in the Kennedy
camp was certain his assurances

were enough to defeat Nixon.

The decisive moment
would come in late 1960

with a series of televised debates
between the two candidates.

[Charnock] They have
a televised presidential debate,

and John F Kennedy, behind the scenes,

is not the healthiest
of men at this point,

projects health and vigor and vitality.

The candidates need no introduction.

The Republic candidate,
Vice-President Richard M Nixon,

and the Democratic Candidate,
Senator John F Kennedy.

[Charnock] He's tanned,
he's wearing make-up.

His father's work in Hollywood means
that he knows the best television men,

and so they've all done everything
they can to present him perfectly

for the television age,

and Nixon's not been very well,
he's had a bit of a temperature.

He looks sort of older and crumpled,
even though they're similar ages.

So, you know, just the images
that are projected are so different,

and that association of Kennedy
with youth, modernity and the future

stays with him, and Nixon
can never really identify with that.

Because they felt that
the American society was moving again,

I want us to recapture that image.

[White] That first television debate
showed the importance of image.

The overwhelming majority of people
who watched the debate

on their television sets thought
that Kennedy had won comprehensively.

People who listened on the radio
thought it had been a tie,

which says everything
about the importance of the visual image.

Before that first debate
Kennedy was behind in the polls,

narrowly, but he was behind.

After the first television debate
with Nixon,

Kennedy moved ahead in the polls
and he stayed ahead.

[narrator] Jubilant parades
and celebration marked the day

JFK won the race to the White House.

But for the man they were cheering,
this signaled the beginning of the end.

For many, he was the perfect leader
for a forward-thinking America

yet his policies and political dogma

were taken
from his experience of the past.

His political maneuvering
and independent manner

seemed astute for such a young man,

but behind him was a father
pulling the strings and making decisions.

What made this sickly prep-school boy
from New England

stand out, however, was his image.

He was everything to everyone
and became the blueprint

for a new form of politics.

All these factors were carefully
crafted together

in the making of a truly modern president.