This essay is adapted from Marc C. Johnson’s recent book “Mansfield and Dirksen: Bipartisan Giants of the Senate.” Johnson is a fellow at the Mansfield Center at the University of Montana.
Sixty years have passed since John Kennedy’s death in Dallas, and it is entirely appropriate to reflect on what America has seen and become in those six decades. Politics doesn’t have to be the way it has too often become. Mike Mansfield proved that.