Post by Vincent S.

It is hard to imagine the latest American president generating the kind of warm welcome abroad his most popular predecessors, Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, enjoyed. In late 1959, Ike, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe at the end of World War II, was greeted by millions of Indians on his goodwill tour. Similarly, JFK moved enormous crowds while visiting Mexico City in June-July 1962 and Naples, in Italy, in July 1963. Nevertheless, his most memorable success was probably his late June 1963 visit to West Berlin. Over one million people (more than half the city’s population) lined the streets to hail him and more than 150,000 listened to his famous “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” speech on the Rudolph Wilde Platz (now John F. Kennedy Platz/Square). Later that day, aboard Air Force One, Kennedy told his speechwriter and close advisor, Ted Sorensen, “We’ll never have another day like this one as long as we live.”

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