JFK's American University and Civil Rights Speeches Hold Lessons for Obama and McCain

Alliance for Progress 1961

I would love to see a re awakening of JFK's polocies. Especially A for P as i believe sharing the wealth with developing countries would have brought lasting peace to the world. More importantely people as a whole would have been able to stay in their own countries . Unfortunately we pushed colonialism ....impoverished their lands .....went across the waters for slave labor & left nothing but hopelessness & the cocoa leaf to sell to our children....all in less than 50 yrs.

A question to Robert Schlesinger

This question is to Mr. Robert Schlesinger not related to this article, but rather about a sentence in his father's article. I thank the moderator in advance for conveying my question to Mr. Robert Schlesinger.

What does the word "tribalism" refer to in the following paragraph of his father's article "Folly's Antidote"?

Sometimes, when I am particularly depressed, I ascribe our behavior to stupidity — the stupidity of our leadership, the stupidity of our culture. Three decades ago, we suffered defeat in an unwinnable war against tribalism, the most fanatic of political emotions, fighting against a country about which we knew nothing and in which we had no vital interests. Vietnam was hopeless enough, but to repeat the same arrogant folly 30 years later in Iraq is unforgivable. The Swedish statesman Axel Oxenstierna famously said, “Behold, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.”

Commend you for your Handling of Sorensen on C-Span tonight

I found Sorensen arrogant and snippy. Saw you struggle in surprise yet persist with class. I wish Kennedy's handling of his religious affiliation had come early to Obama. Found it very interesting that you brought up the perception of Kennedy as too lofty, forcing Sorensen to double-take on the intelligence in the American citizenry. There will never be another Kennedy, but Sorensen's accurate comparison to Obama spoke worlds of acknowledgment for the more common political assumption that you have to dumb down to speak to Americans.

I'm here because of Ashley - from Obama's speech

"There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."

"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins."

Kennedy's Intonation

One of the great features of the AU speech - of almost any of the famous JFK speeches - is the power of his delivery, atop the poetry of the words.

Sorensen's words sing, but for me what makes the speech truly memorable is the president's perfect intonation of the line that ends, "we are all mortal." The wise, fatalistic, caring tone puts Kennedy in the seat next to you on the lifeboat.

Given your expertise on the subject, Rob, I'd like to hear you analyze the Obama and McCain deliveries sometime.

Style over Substance

An interesting article; and the current political debate in the UK attempts to use this dichotomy, with PM Gordon Brown accused of providing substance without rhetoric and his Conservative opposite number David Cameron of rhetorical flair and a policy vacuum. Schlesinger is clearly right in pushing us to recognise the importance of both: it will be fascinating to see whether Obama can pull it off.