White House Ghosts: JFK and Sorenson

How John F. Kennedy’s most illustrious speeches were constructed

 

WASHINGTON D.C. (By Robert Schlesinger, NYTimes) May 5, 2008 — On Nov. 8, 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy edged Vice President Richard M. Nixon, achieving a 120,000-vote plurality out of more than 68 million cast. Kennedy and his closest adviser and top aide, Ted Sorensen, commenced work on his inaugural address. Solicit suggestions, Kennedy said, and keep it short; make it forward looking, JFK said, marking the generational change for which he had campaigned.

On Thanksgiving 1960, a little over two weeks after the election, the newly minted White House special counsel dined at the home of his friend and deputy, Myer "Mike" Feldman. Retiring to Feldman's study, he made a first pass at the inaugural. Over the next month and a half, Sorensen worked on it in odd snatches of time. On December 23, he sent a Western Union telegram to 10 people, including former Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson, who had been the Democratic standard-bearer in 1952 and 1956; economist John Kenneth Galbraith; and three future Kennedy cabinet secretaries — Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg, and Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon — soliciting their advice.

The president-elect flew down to Palm Beach on January 10. Sorensen had given him a six-page typed draft of the inaugural address. It contained the final basic structure and at least rough versions of many of the memorable phrases of the inaugural address. "So let the word go forth to all the world — and suit the action to the word — that this generation of Americans has no intention of becoming soft instead of resolute, smug instead of resourceful, or citizens of a second-rate power," the draft read, as compared with the final version: "Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans — born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage — and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world."

Several contributors' work was in this draft. Sorensen liberally borrowed from Stevenson and Galbraith (whose "We shall never negotiate out of fear. But we shall never fear to negotiate" became the more exhortative "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate").

Using Sorensen's draft as a starting point, Kennedy dictated to his secretary another version of the speech that included important new material (a generation "born in this century — tempered by the war" and a willingness to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardships, support any friend, oppose any foe"). He inserted several pages from the Sorensen draft, encompassing much of the body of the speech.

"Ask not." An early version of the famous "ask not" passage appeared in the Sorensen draft. Like other timeless sentiments, variations of this phrase had been expressed before. For example, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes had said in 1884: "It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what your country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return."

Kennedy had considered the idea at least as early as 1945. He had tried different riffs on it during the presidential campaign: Speaking on national television on September 20, he said, "We do not campaign stressing what our country is going to do for us as a people. We stress what we can do for the country, all of us."

Sorensen joined Kennedy in Florida on January 16 before flying back with him the following day. Once in the air, Kennedy summoned Time magazine correspondent Hugh Sidey to his private compartment and started scratching out an apparent first draft of the inaugural. At one point Kennedy tossed the pad into the reporter's lap and asked his opinion. Sidey was stunned that only three days before his swearing-in, Kennedy was still working on a first draft of his speech. But the truth was that the speech was in almost final form: The performance was designed to illustrate to a leading reporter that the new president was his own writer.

The ploy was undoubtedly motivated by a desire to establish authorship both for the contemporary audience and for posterity. JFK was also driven by questions about what he had written himself. Rumors and accusations had circulated in Washington ever since the publication of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Profiles in Courage, angering Kennedy no end.

Shortly before 1 p.m. on Jan. 20, 1961, as applause echoed against the marble pillars and walls of the Capitol, Kennedy opened the binder that contained his address and waited for the cheers to fade:

We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom, symbolizing an end as well as a beginning, signifying renewal as well as change.

Moving into the White House, Kennedy and Sorensen continued the pattern that they had developed over the previous seven years. They would begin by discussing how Kennedy wanted to approach a topic and what conclusions he wished to reach. Speeches were not to exceed 20 or 30 minutes.

Short words and clauses were the order, with simplicity and clarity the goal. A self-described "idealist without illusions," JFK preferred a cool, cerebral approach and had little use for florid expression and complex prose. He liked alliteration, "not solely for reasons of rhetoric but to reinforce the audience's recollection of his reasoning." His taste for contrapuntal phrasing — never negotiating out of fear but never fearing to negotiate — illustrated his dislike of extreme opinions and options.

On Tuesday, Oct. 16, 1962, McGeorge Bundy, the national security adviser, started Kennedy's morning with news that the Soviets had secretly set up nuclear missile bases in Cuba, a mere 90 miles from Florida.

Cuba had become an annoying theme for the administration. While JFK had hammered Nixon and the Republicans for "losing" the island nation, all he had accomplished thus far was the Bay of Pigs disaster. At the Justice Department, Robert F. Kennedy was overseeing Operation Mongoose, the CIA's largest covert program, designed to use a variety of different schemes ranging from espionage to low-grade terrorism to counterfeiting to rid Cuba of dictator Fidel Castro.

Cuba was also a public focus of both the United States and the U.S.S.R. On September 11, the Soviet government had stated that its nuclear arsenal had such reach and power that there would be no reason for arms to be based in any other countries, "for instance, Cuba." The statement had added that shipments of arms to Cuba — recently increased — were "designed exclusively for defensive purposes."

For his part, Kennedy had drawn a strategic line. If Cuba were to "become an offensive military base of significant capacity for the Soviet Union," he warned at a September 13 press conference, "then this country will do whatever must be done to protect its own security and that of its allies."

All the while missiles moved onto the island. And now U.S. spy planes had discovered them, presenting Kennedy with both a problem and an opportunity. On one hand, this was a dangerous and provocative act on the part of the Soviets. While the missiles made little practical strategic difference in the global balance of power, once unveiled they would be a potent challenge to U.S. prestige.

Options. But the Soviet secrecy gave Kennedy room to maneuver. Hours after learning of the missiles, he convened in the Cabinet Room what came to be known as the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, or simply the Ex Comm. The group consisted mainly of predictable persons — in addition to Bundy, Kennedy, and Vice President Lyndon Johnson were Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and their aides; Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Maxwell Taylor; representatives of the CIA; and the U.S. attorney general, Robert Kennedy.

But Sorensen also was a regular and important member of the Ex Comm. Whatever action Kennedy settled on, he would have to explain it to the American people and the world.

Early on, the policy debate focused primarily on military means to eliminate the missiles. During the first Ex Comm meeting, JFK summarized the possibilities open to the United States: a "surgical" airstrike to destroy the missile sites alone; a broader airstrike, which would eliminate any Soviet ability to counterattack; a full invasion of Cuba; or a military blockade to prevent any additional Soviet forces or materiel from reaching the island.

Try as they might, a course of action with an airtight case eluded the group. Debate swung back and forth. On Thursday, October 18, Sorensen wrote a draft of a speech for Kennedy to give after a military strike against the island. "This morning I reluctantly ordered the armed forces to attack and destroy the nuclear buildup in Cuba," the president's speech read. Americans should "remain calm, go about your daily business, secure in the knowledge that our freedom-loving country will not allow its security to be undermined."

That night, the Ex Comm seemed to agree on a blockade with the possibility of military action later, only to revisit the question on Friday morning. Sorensen retired to his office and tried a first draft of a naval blockade speech. But at this hour of maximum danger, his pen faltered.

Sorensen returned to the Ex Comm late that afternoon in the unaccustomed position of being without a speech. Rather, he brought with him the questions that had halted his hand. "As the concrete answers were provided in our discussions, the final shape of the president's policy began to take form," he noted. "It was in a sense an amalgam of the blockade-airstrike routes, and a much stronger, more satisfied consensus formed behind it." That night he stayed up until 3 o'clock writing a draft.

On Saturday, October 20, the group debated Sorensen's draft, and also an airstrike draft, which Bundy had prepared and which was favored by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and Treasury Secretary Dillon. JFK, who always favored leaving an out for an opponent, elected the limited course of a blockade while leaving open an airstrike down the road.

Even then debate continued, with Stevenson, now the ambassador to the United Nations, arguing that the speech should include an offer to trade the missiles in Turkey. Kennedy conceded that such a trade would probably ultimately be necessary, but he insisted that that bargaining chip be held in abeyance rather than played in the opening gambit. (In the end, the missiles in Turkey were secretly bargained away — a fact that would not become public for decades.)

Five minutes before the 7 p.m. airtime on October 22, the president lowered himself onto the seat at his desk, a pair of pillows cushioning him. Wearing a corset to relieve his chronic bad back, Kennedy sat straight and stared into the camera as he prepared to give the most important speech of his life — and of the Cold War:

Good evening, my fellow citizens. This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.

Framing the issue as one of Soviet secrecy and deception, JFK quickly won the country's support. The Cuban missile crisis was the Cold War's critical moment. Several factors were important in Kennedy's successful handling of the crisis — perhaps none more important than having time to consider all options. Setting policy into words had raised new questions and exposed possible weaknesses. And choosing the right words for the speech itself helped set the terms of the international debate.