Politica Dynastica: Kennedy, Lodge, and the Coming of War in Vietnam (Kenneth E. Montague Presidential Rhetoric Series)

"Certainly within the past one hundred years," wrote one commentator in the summer of 1960, "no simple City has so dominated the political scene as Boston does today." That year, Massachusetts Sen.John F. Kennedy was the Democratic nominee for president. His Republican opponent, Richard M. Nixon, chose as his running mate ambassador to the United Nations and former senator from Massachusetts, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. In Politica Dynastica: Kennedy, Lodge, and the Coming of War in Vietnam, Daniel R.Hart explores how the relationship between Kennedy and Lodge reflected a microcosm of mid-twentieth century Boston: Lodge the exemplar of the established privilege of the Brahmin caste and Kennedy the culminating embodiment of the striving Irish Catholic immigrant. In 1952, Kennedy challenged the thrice-elected Lodge for a seat in the Senate, a triumph that would propel Kennedy to presidency.By the third year of his presidency, Kennedy had overcome his early foreign policy struggles-the Bay of P