ABSTRACT
In death, JFK became a liberal icon, but we misjudge both him and his times if we see him as automatically the chief standard bearer for an American social democratic tradition associated with FDR's New Deal reforms. This is apparent from the start of his political career. As a congressman and a senator, Kennedy was more clearly an embodiment of his father's skepticism towards the New Deal than one of its staunch defenders. At the end of the 1940s, he was a politician whose limited liberal aspirations were tailored to his election needs in Massachusetts, and whose more expansive foreign policy views were geared to securing higher office. Even in the Senate, his domestic policy goals seemed circumspect compared to those of outright liberals like Hubert Humphrey, and his foreign policy statements, although they did contain an awareness of the importance of nationalist sentiment in areas affected by decolonization, were still largely compatible with the containment doctrine.
