We’ve heard JFK’s speech on TV a bajillion times. He said (loosely quoted) “This nation will put a man on the moon by the end of this decade, and do the other thing, not because it is easy, but because it is hard”(emphasis mine)
What other thing did/should we do?
I’ve always assumed it was a reference to sleeping with Marilyn Monroe.
You misheard it slightly- it’s “…and do the other things,” which are: climb the highest mountain, fly the Atlantic, and play Texas. Transcript here.
He said, “And do the other things,” by which I think he implicitly meant all of the other national priorities he had set: prevailing in the Cold War, establishing the Peace Corps, improving cities, etc. JFK had a very assertive view of Federal power and responsibilities after what was commonly viewed as the sleepwalking of the Eisenhower years.
It was his Rice University speech, excerpted here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RaRC6YuYCQ
The para preceeding lists the other things. Some harder than others.
"There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
Beaten again !%&#@!@~(&#@%#@!)@#!~
Indeed, like Rice playing Texas. 
It’s obvious from that quote that JFK listed the hardest thing last.
–robby (Rice alum)
Yeesh, one of the most memorable lines in American oratory was partially a reference to a pandering “how 'bout that local sports team” cliche.
WHat is “play Texas” supposed to mean? Texas holdem pocker?
College football reference.
In case you’re wondering what he meant, here are the last four Rice-Texas scorelines:
2008: Texas 52, Rice 10.
2007: Texas 58, Rice 14.
2006: Texas 52, Rice 7.
2005: Texas 51, Rice 10.
Some things never change.
In the old days, Rice and Texas were in the same conference (the dead Southwest Conference) so they “had” to play Texas, nowadays, Rice just appears to be a glutton for punishment. 
Well, for crying out loud, what do you want? He gave the speech at Rice Stadium!
Anyway, Rice has traditionally been so overmatched by powerhouses like the University of Texas (UT) that it would be hard to seriously call it pandering. Indeed, Rice hasn’t been known for it’s football team in decades. (Though Rice football has recently had a renaissance; Rice won a bowl game last year for the first time since 1954.)
Instead, Rice is nationally-ranked university, currently rated 17th in the country by U.S. News & World Report.
As far as matching up Rice vs. UT, note that the enrollment at UT is ten times that of Rice (50,000 students vs. 5,000 students). Typically, the smallest UT player is bigger than the biggest Rice player. (However, at football games, we used to chant witty things like “Our players can read! Can yours?” :D)
Nevertheless, Rice still has a Division 1A football team.
Reminds me of the old Harvard cheer, shouted when their team is losing badly:
That’s all right / that’s OK
You’re gonna work for us someday!
I find it hard to believe that Rice doesn’t have any linemen who weigh more than UT’s 190 lb. defensive backs.
Ha! I’ll take sleepwalking anytime over Vietnam, Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missle Crisis, etc.
Well, much as I admire JFK, I didn’t say it was always for the best…
I always thought Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis was widely recognized as a masterful handling of a dangerous incident. Why is it lumped in with Vietnam and Bay of Pigs?
It’s generally considered that when Kruschev first met Kennedy (at a summit conference in Vienna) that Kruschev thought Kennedy to be inexperienced and naive and easy to roll over.
The thinking goes that if Kruschev had considered Kennedy tougher/more experienced, Kruschev wouldn’t have put missiles in Cuba in the first place, much less let it get to a crisis level.
Because it cuts both ways. It was a masterful display of brinksmanship, but not a masterful display of intelligence.
The Soviets actually “won” the crisis, since putting nukes in Cuba achieved exactly what Kruschev intended to achieve- he got the US Jupiter ballistic missiles removed from Turkey. However, nobody publicly admitted that we were removing the missiles from Turkey (mostly because it was theoretically a secret that they were there in the first place).
Thus, people saw Kruschev as weak afterward, when in actual fact he had bullied us into doing exactly what he wanted.
If Kennedy deserves any credit for the CMC, it’s for not listening to the Joint Chiefs, who unamimously agreed that bombing Cuba was the only sensible move.
Hmmm, that’s an interesting interpretation. It’s not one I’ve heard before, which of course doesn’t mean anything. I do have to say that if the rest of the Soviet leadership had believed this, they would have left him in power. My understanding is that they tossed him out because they thought he was a “adventurer”, with the Cuban affair the prime example.
It is true that we removed the Jupiter missiles from Turkey, but I think history in general judges this as a necessary face-saving concession rather than folding under pressure.
I don’t know what it was, but that’s how history has played it out. We never needed those missiles, and as I have heard it, we were at least thinking about removing them before the crisis erupted.
I sense that Kennedy was held hostage from the get-go by his image of being “soft on Communism”. He was also inexperienced, which may have led him to trust the people who told him that Bay of Pigs would work. Of course, we would have had Bay of Pigs with Nixon, too. I suspect that of all the contemporary leaders, only Eisenhower would have been savvy enough to say “no”, and he would have been the only person with enough clout to make that decision stick.
The JCS and everyone else were pushing for war. I can see why. LeMay never got over how badly the US had been surprised by Pearl Harbor, and how poorly the AAF was prepared for strategic bombing.
Alas, he went to far in the other direction. Some generals may always be fighting the last war because they live with the pain and guilt of seeing people die from mistakes. Don’t get me wrong, I think he was a bit nutty, but I’ve never had to send people out in airplanes knowing with certainty that some of them are about to die at random.
I think the US “won” (in a limited sense) in the Cuban Missile crisis. We made it clear that Soviet involvement with Cuba could not include naked threats to the US.