In July 1960 the Democrats nominated John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who narrowly defeated Republican candidate Richard Nixon, a presidential candidate. Kennedy's first economic proposals were intended to counteract the effects of the economic recession for which it was necessary to increase public spending. Other measures were taken to help economically depressed regions and to raise the minimum wage of workers employed in interstate commerce. However, much of its national policy agenda was rejected by Congress.
The election of Kennedy as president of the United States was the sign of the country's willingness to confront the new phase of Soviet competition with new ideas and young energies. In the early 1960s, the atmosphere of heated debate and criticism of society was compounded by widespread malaise toward Eisenhower's politics. After eight years of Republican rule and despite the new electoral formulas and promises, the methods formulated after World War II proved insufficient. The society demanded new stimuli to face the Soviet challenge with imagination. From this national demand was the Democratic candidate John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Kennedy's presidential action must not fail to recognize a series of circumstances: his status
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Kennedy, in order to get ahead of any political initiative by Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro, modeled a new US policy toward its continental neighbors: the Alliance for Progress. This program, which included financial aid of more than $ 46 billion, was based on a number of points: supporting democracies against dictatorships, granting long-term credits, stabilizing export prices, Programs of agrarian reform, arms control, aid for research and strengthening of the Organization of American States (OAS) as a decision-making body with political mechanisms. All but the Cuban leader Fidel Castro, in power since January 1959, accepted the program of the young American