JFK's growth as a politician shown in well-timed exhibit

'The Making of a President' highlights early achievements

On a 1937 trip through Europe, a 20-year-old John Kennedy wanted to know whether European unrest would lead to war. He was also looking for affordable accommodations in Paris.

"The general impression also seems to be that there will not be a war in the near future," he wrote in a journal that is being made public for the first time in an exhibit to be unveiled today at the John F. Kennedy Library.

Several sentences later he wrote that, speaking in French, he had mistakenly invited a soldier to dinner, "but succeeded in making him pay for it."

Timed to coincide with this year's presidential elections, the new exhibit focuses on President Kennedy's early life to illustrate some of the raw ingredients required to make a successful presidential candidate.

"I hope this shows what makes someone decide they want to, or can, become president," said James Wagner, exhibits specialist at the library. "I hope people will see what in his experiences prepared him."

A report card from Harvard shows that he might have had an inauspicious start, receiving a D in history his sophomore year. A page in his class notebook shows the future president toying with his signature, writing it four times in the top left-hand corner with various cursive shapes for the J and K.

The exhibit, called "The Making of a President," is being presented as two current presidential candidates try to use their biographies to demonstrate why they should be president.

Democratic Senator Barack Obama has leaned on his world travels and an unusual childhood spent in Indonesia to demonstrate that he would bring a new approach to international diplomacy. Republican Senator John McCain has frequently used his military service and five years as a prisoner of war to highlight his character and service to his country.

The exhibit recalls how Kennedy also relied on personal biography in his early campaigns. He handed out tie clips in the shape of PT 109 - the Naval vessel he was aboard in 1943 when it was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer in the South Pacific.

The first national magazine cover he appeared on, PIC, The Magazine for Young Men, had "Congressional Candidate John F. Kennedy, War Veteran." His campaign ads for his Senate run had his military service featured prominently underneath, "Highlights of a courageous and clear-thinking career!"

The exhibit also has a video that shows Kennedy in his Senate office, a rudimentary version of the biographical videos that are created today to encapsulate presidential candidates.

"For JFK, a big part of it was his biography," Wagner said. "The war was a big part of his story, and that piece of his biography was very effective. It was something people could identify with."

There is a postcard Kennedy wrote to his mother on his first visit to Washington, when he was 12. "Dear Mother, Just arrived and very tired. We are going to the Capital tomorrow. Good night. Love, Jack."

There is a journal that Kennedy kept with him throughout the 1940s, writing in it quotes he liked (one page includes quotes by Abraham Lincoln, Huck Finn, and himself). Toward the end of the 1940s, he started writing down names of potential Massachusetts supporters, who might help him in his first congressional campaign.

Also on display is his nominating paper for the US Senate, certifying his signatures from Massachusetts residents. Kennedy needed 2,500 to get on the ballot, but he collected 262,324, perhaps to thwart any would-be challengers.

In 1945, during a brief career as a journalist with International News Service, Kennedy went to San Francisco to cover the formation of the United Nations. The library has some of his scrawled notes on display, along with his business card.

There are draft pages for his book "Profiles in Courage," and a certificate he received when he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for it. On display is the Underwood typewriter he used to write his senior thesis, which later became his first book, "Why England Slept."

On their first wedding anniversary in 1954, Jackie Kennedy gave her husband a leather-bound copy of his major speeches as a freshman senator.

She also inscribed a poem in the first few pages, which the library has displayed:

Meanwhile in Massachusetts, John Kennedy dreamed

Walking the shore by the Cape Cod Sea

Of all the things he was going to be

Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com.