I look forward to a great future for America, a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth wit… - John F. Kennedy

I was assured by every son of a bitch I checked with — all the military experts and the CIA — that the plan would succeed.

I want to talk about our common responsibilities in the face of a common danger. The events of recent weeks may have helped to illuminate that challenge for some; but the dimensions of its threat have loomed large on the horizon for many years. Whatever our hopes may be for the future — for reducing this threat or living with it — there is no escaping either the gravity or the totality of its challenge to our survival and to our security — a challenge that confronts us in unaccustomed ways in every sphere of human activity. This deadly challenge imposes upon our society two requirements of direct concern both to the press and to the President — two requirements that may seem almost contradictory in tone, but which must be reconciled and fulfilled if we are to meet this national peril. I refer, first, to the need for a far greater public information; and, second, to the need for far greater official secrecy.

Mr. President, Senate Joint Resolution 31, concerning which there has been little, if any, public interest or knowledge, constitutes one of the most far-reaching — and I believe mistaken — schemes ever proposed to alter the American constitutional system. No one knows with any certainty what will happen if our electoral system is totally revamped as proposed by Senate Joint Resolution 31 and the various amendments which will be offered to it. Today, we have a clearly Federal system of electing our President, under which the States act as units. Today, we have the two-party system, under which third parties and splinter parties are effectively discouraged from playing more than a negligible role. Today, we have a system which in all but one instance throughout our history has given us presidents elected by a plurality of the popular vote. I refer to one instance, because the frequently mentioned situation in 1824, involving Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams, in which six States did not have popular votes, can be ignored; and the other frequently mentioned case, that of the Hayes-Tilden contest, involved outright corruption, and the decision of the electoral commission was responsible for the election of Hayes; so in the 175 years of our constitutional system, there is really only one valid example in which the present system produced the election of a candidate who did not receive the largest number of votes. And today we have an electoral vote system which gives both large States and small States certain advantages and disadvantages that offset each other.