Promises Kept

A counter-revisionist examination of John F. Kennedy and his administration, Promises Kept presents a policy history of major domestic legislative efforts between 1961 and 1963. Bernstein focuses on administrative and congressional progress under Kennedy in civil rights, education, taxes, unemployment, Medicare, and the Peace Corps. He persuasively argues that Kennedy was indeed a successful president, maintaining that the revisionists "are dead wrong." In this brilliant reassessment,...
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A counter-revisionist examination of John F. Kennedy and his administration, Promises Kept presents a policy history of major domestic legislative efforts between 1961 and 1963. Bernstein focuses on administrative and congressional progress under Kennedy in civil rights, education, taxes, unemployment, Medicare, and the Peace Corps. He persuasively argues that Kennedy was indeed a successful president, maintaining that the revisionists "are dead wrong." In this brilliant reassessment, Bernstein contends that many of Kennedy's campaign promises were well on their way to enactment by the third year of his first term, even after his first two years dealing with a hostile and balky congress, and a political system reckoning with the transition of a society from conservative to liberal. Berstein also asserts that many of Kennedy's objectives that were later achieved by Lyndon Johnson would have been brought to fruition by Kennedy himself had he not been assisinated. He supports this arguement by tracing Kennedy's selection of advisors and directors on each issue, piecing together his overall decision-making process through original written sources and previously published works, and calculating the probability that the policy would have been successfully implemented.
A provocative new account of JFK's domestic achievements, Promises Kept is a vivid recreation of the major political and social confrontations of the 1960s, and a major contribution to the understanding and study of recent American history.