Abstract

This thesis seeks to introduce the reader to the underpinnings on which John F. Kennedy's 1960 Presidential campaign was based. Well before Kennedy declared his candidacy for Democratic Party nomination for President he gathered together a group of academics from in and around the Boston area and formed his own personal think tank in much the same way that Franklin D. Roosevelt did before his Presidential campaign of 1932. Unlike Roosevelt, Kennedy did not call his group a Brains Trust, instead he chose to call his collection of professors the Academic Advisory Group. This treatise will establish the Academic Advisory Group's existence, flesh out its mandate, identify its creator and map out its evolution from its earliest origins to the interregnum prior to John F. Kennedy's Inauguration. The aim is to identify some of the key players within the Group and show how they individually and collectively related to the candidate and his campaign. Essentially, this treatise will examine the details surrounding the speech-making process of a Presidential campaign, and answer three distinct questions: who advised Kennedy; what was he told; and did he heed the advice he was offered?