The Kennedy Cabinet | ||
---|---|---|
Office | Name | Term |
President | John F. Kennedy | 1961–1963 |
Vice President | Lyndon B. Johnson | 1961–1963 |
Secretary of State | Dean Rusk | 1961–1963 |
Secretary of Treasury | C. Douglas Dillon | 1961–1963 |
Secretary of Defense | Robert McNamara | 1961–1963 |
Attorney General | Robert F. Kennedy | 1961–1963 |
Postmaster General | J. Edward Day | 1961–1963 |
John A. Gronouski | 1963 | |
Secretary of the Interior | Stewart Udall | 1961–1963 |
Secretary of Agriculture | Orville Freeman | 1961–1963 |
Secretary of Commerce | Luther H. Hodges | 1961–1963 |
Secretary of Labor | Arthur Goldberg | 1961–1962 |
W. Willard Wirtz | 1962–1963 | |
Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare |
Abraham A. Ribicoff | 1961–1962 |
Anthony J. Celebrezze | 1962–1963 |
The presidency of John F. Kennedy began on January 20, 1961, at noon Eastern Standard Time, when John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as President of the United States, and ended on November 22, 1963, upon his assassination and death, a span of 1,036 days. He was succeeded by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. A Democrat, he took office following the 1960 presidential election, in which he defeated Richard Nixon, the then–incumbent Vice President.
Kennedy, the 35th United States president, was the first person born in the 20th century to be elected president, and, at age 43, the youngest person elected to the office. He was also the first Roman Catholic elected to the presidency.
Kennedy's time in office was marked by Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union and its satellite states, as well as Cuba. In Cuba, a failed attempt was made in April 1961 at the Bay of Pigs to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. Kennedy's administration subsequently rejected plans by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to orchestrate false-flag attacks on American soil in order to gain public approval for a war against Cuba. In October 1962, it was discovered that Soviet ballistic missiles had been deployed in Cuba; the resulting period of unease, termed the Cuban Missile Crisis, is seen by many historians as the closest the human race has ever come to nuclear war between nuclear-armed belligerents.