ABSTRACT
John Fitzgerald Kennedy grew up in a political family: politics was the regular topic of dinner-table conversation among the four boys and five girls who populated the lively Kennedy household. Kennedy, like Theodore Roosevelt, found a way to play his fighting story outside himself, in politics. Like Roosevelt, his initial ventures drew heavily on his burgeoning reputation as a "war hero". In 1948 Kennedy was reelected to Congress; in 1952 he won a hard contest against Henry Cabot Lodge for the Senate; in 1956 he lost a try for the Vice-Presidential nomination to Estes Kefauver, a cliffhanger, after a senator named Lyndon Johnson tried to help him out, "Texas proudly casts its vote for the fighting sailor who wears the scars of battle". A large problem for Kennedy, from at least 1959 on, had been differentiating himself from opponents. Kennedy's main fight was against an "ism"- Eisenhowerism.
