Kazin on JFK

"It takes nerve to be president, and once you are in, it takes more nerve to keep from being pulled into extreme positions. Kennedy, the intellectual in his speeches, showed all the signs of being a liberal like us. Now that the 'revolt' in Cuba has ended in a disgraceful loss for us as well as for the rebels, he is no longer the man in the middle (us) but the defender of the West in extremis, taking a 'tough' line. [Barry] Goldwater is please, David Lawrence is pleased, The [New York Daily] News and New York Daily Mirror are pleased. I am full of doubt and wonder. As an intellectual pur, nothing but an intellectual, as it often seems to me, I find myself wondering more and more how long it is possible to remain in the middle. The pull of political gravity these days seems physical in its force. All of us liberals and intellectuals, so firmly in the middle, committed to 'principle,' like Kennedy, find ourselves being pushed and pulled."

~~ from Alfred Kazin's Journals, Selected and Edited by Richard M. Cook