In 1960, on the edge of a new decade, Norman Mailer thought he might have seen a superman coming to the supermarket. The supermarket was the U.S. presidential election; the possible superman, disguised as an orthodox candidate of a mainstream political party, was John F. Kennedy. Despite the conventionality of his politics, Kennedy had “the eyes of a mountaineer” and the “cool grace” of a hipster. Ever since a Japanese destroyer rammed his PT boat and left him swimming for life on the vast Pacific, Kennedy had “the remote and private air of a man who has traversed some lonely terrain of experience, of loss and gain, of nearness to death, which leaves him isolated from the mass of others.”