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>> “I’d be very happy to tell them I’m not a liberal at all,” adding, speaking of liberals, “I’m not comfortable with those people.” <<

Interesting. Where do you get your quote? JFK went on record in 1960 to happily accept the Liberal Party of New York's nomination and gave a speech to them saying he was "proud" to be a liberal and believed in "progressive" big-government policies on education, health care, and welfare.

Either your quote from 1953 is inaccurate, JFK had "evolved" in seven years, or JFK was simply two faced and told different audiences what they wanted to hear.

That link traces the quote to the Saturday Evening Post, which appears to be the original source. I used that link because it was the first place I saw that quote online, but I'd seen it in a print book a few days earlier in the week, along with a fuller account of the context--unfortunately I didn't see the full quote online when I was posting this and I can't remember the source off the top of my head (I was doing some research on several topics--think it might have been one of Geoff Shepard's two books on Watergate or Burton Hersh's book on Ted Kennedy but I'm not 100% sure), but I do remember it was a well-researched source, and I am sure it is a genuine quote. The context was something to the effect of reporters were expressing surprise that he wasn't espousing a liberal party line, which prompted the comment quoted. To put this in the context of his development, JFK and RFK were both very supportive of Joseph McCarthy in 1953, and they defended him later when people attacked him--even into the 60s I believe. I think JFK had a mix of liberal and conservative policies depending on what the topic was, and the same was true of RFK to an extent, but RFK became more liberal as the 60s went on, while Ted veered way off to the far left after his brothers died. My best guess would be that JFK was trying to appeal to liberal voters in the 1960 election with the quote you give. He was certainly capable of being two-faced.