Photo of the Day

It is January 14, 1963.

President Kennedy is in the House Chamber delivering his third, and final, State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress.

President and Mrs. Kennedy enter the Capitol Building, January 14, 1963.

The 1964 election weighs heavy on his mind.

So, in an effort to bolster his political standing, he proposes an aggressive domestic agenda,

coupled with significant reductions in personal and corporate tax rates.

Mrs. Kennedy listens to the State of the Union Address. Lady Bird Johnson is to her left.

‘Both are needed,’ he said.

‘[T]ax reduction alone is not enough to strengthen our society.’

“This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.”

President Johnson visits rural Kentucky to promote legislation aimed at reducing the nation's poverty, April 1964.

So, Kennedy advocates constraining the cost of existing programs to enable the enactment of significant new initiatives:

— Improving public education and vocational training.

— Creating a domestic version of his Peace Corps.

— Enacting Medicare.

— Expanding medical school capacity to create more doctors.

— Providing indigent criminal defendants with publicly funded lawyers.

Civil rights leaders, including Dr. and Mrs. King, center, march for Black voting rights in Selma, Alabama, March 1965. They were attacked by Alabama highway patrol officers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

— Eliminating racial discrimination in voting.

— Funding local mass transit.

— Expanding national parks, wildlife and wilderness preserves, and developing water conservation projects.

Why do these things?

To make America great.

Civil rights leaders gather at the White House for a meeting with President Kennedy after the March on Washington, August 28, 1963.

From Kennedy’s address:

“These are not domestic concerns alone.

For upon our achievement of greater vitality and strength here at home

hang our fate and [our] future in the world,

[determining] our ability to sustain and supply

the security of free men and nations,

our ability to command their respect for our leadership,

and our ability to adjust to the changing demands of…

competition and challenge.”

Kennedy delivers his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech to a crowd of 120,000 in Berlin, June 26, 1963.

Kennedy’s initiatives will eventually become the law of the land,

bolstering the health and education of the people and removing constraints

on the exercise their constitutional rights.

And most people say these things made the nation stronger.

President Kennedy with John, Jr., in Newport, September 15, 1963.

It boils down to how you define national greatness.

The truth is, it’s more than just a money thing.

******************************

I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda