you had bay of pigs. berlin wall. john glenn and what he did that day and with his entire life was a true statement about what it is to be an american. tom, you spoke with him on the 50th anniversary of kennedy s assassination next to his space capsule. take a look. does this thing look any larger or smaller to you every time you come by? it always looks small. it looks small when we re getting ready to go in 62 also. when you launched to make the first american orbital flight of this precious planet, the rest of us all had our hearts in our throat watching. had reservations. i can t say i was 100% convinced. it s something that was important for the country and something you re committed to do. kennedy and glenn became friends and the 92-year-old former astronaut, marine hero,
plenty of pomp and circumstance for the white house. this morning, president obama awarded the presidential medal of freedom to 16 people. those included former president bill clinton and oprah winfrey. the obamas and the clip tons then together made their way to arlington national cemetery along with some of the members of the kennedy family. and there as you can see the laid the wreath at the grave of john f. kennedy. this of course is two days before the formal 50th anniversary of kennedy s assassination in texas. but behind the photo ops, president obama is struggling. his signature piece of legislation, obama care, is on life support. we want to begin our coverage tonight with john king. of course, john, this speech tonight is a very important speech, right? he s going to be trying to sort of be in the shadow of jfk, somebody who he s been when he first ran for office he was compared to frequently. he spent the day going from ceremony to ceremony looking very presidential, tryin
tone you might vex pecked tonight. might have been more similar to the sort of excitement you felt when ted kennedy talked about barack obama and how barack obama was so much like his brother. here s ted. there was another time when another young candidate was running for president and challenging america to cross a new frontier. it s time again for a new generation of leadership. it is time now for barack obama! [ cheers ] john king, what made the president make that choice to seem so subdued tonight? frankly i actually thought he looked a little exhausted. i don t know. and i don t read minds. so i m always careful right after a speech to say why did anybody take the tone that the took. i would say in part because he was paying tribute to the late president kennedy on this 50th anniversary of the assassination. that is a large part of it. but it s interesting when you play the bite from ted kennedy, teddy, the became great partners in the united states senate because ted kenned