By Bob Benenson

What slogan did John F. Kennedy coin in his outdoor speech accepting the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination?

a) A New Generation

b) A New Frontier

c) A Torch Has Been Passed

d) The Great Society

Answer: b) Kennedy, who was seeking to become the youngest president at the time of his election, declared himself a candidate of change as he sought to succeed retiring two-term Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in the White House. And he spoke in Los Angeles, at the western extent of the continental United States, he cast the nation as approaching a “new frontier” as it entered the 1960s.

“We stand at the edge of a New Frontier,” said Kennedy, “the frontier of unfulfilled hopes and dreams. Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus.”

Kennedy, in his second term as Democratic senator from Massachusetts, won on to narrowly defeat Republican Richard M. Nixon, the incumbent vice president, that November. His acceptance speech at the Los Angeles Coliseum has stood as the only outdoor presidential convention address — until today, when Democrat Barack Obama is scheduled to accept his party’s nomination for president at Denver’s Invesco Field football stadium.