"We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed. But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course. Both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter

Kennedy and the Civil Rights Movement John Fitzgerald Kennedy, or JFK, served the President of the United States for less than a single full term in the early 1960s after serving in Congress for several terms before this. He was elected in 1960 and took office the following January, promising to explore new frontiers and bring the country to new heights. In late November of 1963, he was assassinated in Dallas,

Presidential Elections Because of the extreme conditions of the 1930s depression, the New Deal under Franklin Roosevelt went further in expanding the powers of the federal government than any previous administration in history, certainly far beyond the very limited role permitted to it by the conservative administrations of Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover in 1921-33. It was the worst depression in U.S. history, and led not only to

King's introduction is blunt: "One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of

There are no props per se, although the presence of his youthful wife in the background might be one 'prop' as a reminder that the torch had been passed to a younger generation, from the older generation embodied by the Eisenhowers. Kennedy's athletic physique dominates the podium. But he does not use aggressive body language, like stretching across lectern which might make him seem as if he were overreaching

Plain Style Plain speaking style The plain oral speaking style: Recent presidential examples Public speaking can serve a variety of functions: to persuade, to inform, or to entertain. There are various ways to achieve these objectives, including using a heightened style of prose, as exemplified in speeches like John F. Kennedy's 1961 "Inaugural address." But because of its extensive use of rhetorical constructions like parallelism, metaphors, and similes, although Kennedy's speech was powerful,