Skip over navigation  John F. Kennedy  To the Presidency  The
Star Senator  JFK's Presidency I  After the 1956 election, many
commentators began to speculate about the possibility of JFK
making a run for the White House. He did nothing to dampen this
buzz, and began laying the groundwork for a presidential bid by
accepting frequent speaking engagements around the country. Nor
did it hurt that his book, Profiles in Courage, was awarded the
prestigious Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957. That JFK's
well-written, but hardly spectacular, work captured the Pulitzer
was a surprise, and many have attributed his receipt of the
award to the behind-the-scenes machinations of his father's
associates. Regardless, winning the Pulitzer gave the handsome,
popular senator yet another upward boost, and no one outside the
Kennedy inner circle knew that JFK had not actually written it.
In the Senate, meanwhile, JFK walked a tightrope between the
Democratic Party's competing interest groups–the liberal wing,
which loved Adlai