As part of the activities around STS-135 (the last shuttle mission), President Obama called the space station today to re-affirm America's role in space. You can read the whole story on Space.com right here.
American Presidents are always caught between a rock and hard place with regards to the space program. Most of what any President promises in his (or someday her) term won't be realized until long after they're out of office, when it comes to space. That makes any space-related initiatives or long-term missions not particularly valuable politically.
Every now and then you get a leader like Kennedy (or, in my home country of Canada, someone like Trudeau or MacDonald) will dream beyond the immediate future and spend some of their political capital on big, visionary challenges for their nation. In other words, space requires political courage.
Both Democrats and Republicans have alternatively supported and withdrawn support for space exploration. It doesn't seem to me to be a left-right political issue, but more an issue of political expediency. Presidents love coming out with big visions for space (Bush the first did it, Bush the second did it), but then the next president comes along and pulls the plug. They always claim to have their reasons, but it's like trying to drive from Montreal to Vancouver, changing drivers, routes and cars every two hours, and having a debate about whether you should make the trip at all.
Democracy can be frustrating sometimes for large programs with little political return. Maybe that's one of the reasons why the Soviets (and now the Chinese) did so well.
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