Modern John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy(born May 29, 1973) is the 45th and current President of the United States.

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy, commonly referred to by his initials JFK, was born and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts. He is the second of nine children of businessman Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr. and philanthropist Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald. All four of his grandparents were the children of immigrants from Ireland. From ninth to twelfth grade, Kennedy attended Choate Rosemary Hall prep school in Wallingford, Connecticut. After graduating from Choate in 1991, he went on to Harvard University. Kennedy graduated from Harvard in 1995 with a Bachelor of Arts in Government. He then obtained with the Boston office of the management consulting firm Bain & Company as an associate consultant. In 1997, Kennedy left Bain & Company after being accepted into the United States Navy's Officer Candidate School.

While attending Officer Candidate School, he decided to become a Navy SEAL. After receiving his commission as an Ensign in the United States Navy, Kennedy went on to Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training. After completing Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training, he attended parachute training and then went on to SEAL Qualification Training. While going through SEAL Qualification Training, Kennedy's father was appointed to the position of U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom. Following his completion of SEAL Qualification Training, he attended SEAL Delivery Vehicle School. Afterwards, Kennedy was assigned to SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1 as an assistant platoon commander. In 2002, his naval aviator older brother, Joe Jr., was killed during a training exercise. Kennedy eventually became a platoon commander and earned a Bronze Star Medal for his actions during a combat mission in Iraq. For that same mission, he also received a Purple Heart for an injury that would leave him with chronic lower back problems. Kennedy was later made operations officer of SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1.

He left the U.S. Navy after eight years of service in 2005. Kennedy then returned to Brookline and with his father's encouragement, he decided to run for Congress as a Democrat. After narrowly winning the Democratic primary on September 19, 2006, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives by the voters of Massachusetts's 4th congressional district on November 7, 2006. Kennedy was sworn in as a congressman on January 3, 2007. He served on the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor and the U.S. House Committee on Veterans' Affairs. On May 13, 2007, Kennedy's sister Kathleen was killed in a plane crash in France. On November 9, 2007, he announced that he would not seek a second term in the U.S. House of Representatives, but instead would run for the United States Senate in 2008.

On September 16, 2008, Kennedy won the Democratic primary. He was elected to the United States Senate on November 4, 2008, defeating incumbent Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., by a narrow margin. Upon being sworn in as a U.S. Senator on January 3, 2009, Kennedy was assigned to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. On September 12, 2009, he married book editor Jacqueline Lee Bouvier. Kennedy underwent several spinal operations in 2010 and 2011. He was often absent from the U.S. Senate because of those surgeries. During his convalescence in 2011, Kennedy published Profiles in Courage, a book about U.S. senators who risked their careers for their personal beliefs, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography in 2012. In 2013, he served on the United States Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management, which held public hearings to investigate corruption in labor unions.

During his 2014 re-election campaign, Kennedy's press secretary at the time, Robert E. Thompson, put together a film entitled The U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy Story, which exhibited a day in the life of the Kennedy and showcased his family life as well as the inner workings of his Senate office. On November 4, 2014, he was re-elected to a second term in the Senate, defeating his Republican opponent, Boston lawyer Vincent J. Celeste, by a wide margin. In the aftermath of his re-election, Kennedy began preparing to run for the presidency in 2016.

On July 3, 2015, 1960, he announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. Though some questioned Kennedy's youth and experience, his charisma and eloquence earned him numerous supporters. He won the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries; defeating Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, Senator Lyndon Johnson of Texas, Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri, and former Governor of Illinois Adlai Stevenson II. At the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, California, Kennedy chose Lyndon Johnson as his vice-presidential running mate. Accepting the Democratic presidential nomination on the night of July 21, he gave his well-known "New Frontier" speech, saying: "For the problems are not all solved and the battles are not all won—and we stand today on the edge of a New Frontier.... But the New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises—it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them."

In the general election, Kennedy's opponent was Republican incumbent vice president Richard Nixon, a former Senator from California. At the start of the fall general election campaign, Nixon held a six-point lead in the polls. However, Kennedy's campaign gained momentum after the first debate on September 26 at Hofstra University, and he pulled slightly ahead of Nixon in most polls. On November 8, Kennedy defeated Nixon in 2016 presidential election. In the national popular vote, he led Nixon by just two-tenths of one percent (48.7% to 48.5%), while in the Electoral College, he won 319 votes to Nixon's 219. At 43 years old, Kennedy is the youngest person elected to the U.S. presidency.

John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States by Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts at noon on January 20, 2017.