now. In his acceptance speech in Los Angeles, for example, Kennedy had said ‘man … has taken into his mortal hands the power to exterminate the entire species some seven times over’, which is a less polished version of what we have here. The line ‘it is time, in short, for a new generation of Americans’ has here acquired the light of a metaphorical torch.
This opening signals something unusual for a presidential Inaugural. Kennedy has ordered this speech to be exclusively about foreign policy. Domestic questions, which were plentiful and problematic – a third recession in seven years, the highest unemployment for two decades and the oppression of black Americans – were weeded out. This is the origin of the flat phrase ‘today at home and around the world’, which has the air of not being at all crafted. It was in fact inserted by Kennedy at the last moment because he suddenly took fright at the realisation that, as a speech devoted to foreign affairs, his Inaugural might read like an evasion on civil rights at home. The effect of seeking to have it both ways is that it doesn’t work. Trying to patch the omission makes the absence of domestic topics glaring. It would have been better to leave out the reference, as his speechwriter had, because then the audience appreciates that the omission was a choice. A perfunctory inclusion makes the audience feel that it must have been an error.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge – and more. To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do – for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder. To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom – and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.
The survival of liberty is, as a subject for a speech, ‘nobly conceived’, as John Steinbeck put it at the time. But words are close to deeds for a president, and Kennedy has, ever since then, faced the accusation that he locked himself into the stance of the cold warrior in the short time he governed with the pledge to ‘pay any price, bear any burden’ in the defence of liberty. Critics have drawn a straight line that runs through the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the peril of the Cuban Missile Crisis to Vietnam and beyond.
Kennedy’s rhetoric has both a lineage and a legacy. The lineage runs in the commitment to liberating the oppressed around the globe, which is an echo of Woodrow Wilson’s internationalism. The legacy ensues in the echoes from 1963 that are audible in the first inaugural addresses of both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, and in George W. Bush’s rhetoric against tyranny in his second Inaugural, after 9/11. ‘When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.’ That could have been Kennedy; in fact it was Bush.
Bear in mind, though, that the calculation changes over time, and the same words in defence of liberty have one charge in 1961 and quite another forty years later. For Kennedy the threat to American liberty was real and domestic, as nuclear annihilation would respect no boundaries. By the time Clinton and Bush come to make speeches in the name of the liberal international order the demands are different. The question has become solely whether America should be out in the world helping to police liberty. But here Sorensen’s writing is as sonorous as anywhere, and we see one of the dangers of rhetoric, which is that it can run away with the speaker. The words have a grandeur which, in the hindsight of the troubles to come, is skirting closer to hubris than Kennedy might have meant. Indeed, a famous later speech, at the American University in Washington in 1963, treated a similar topic in a much more emollient fashion.
Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction. We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed. But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course – both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war. So let us begin anew – remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belabouring those problems which divide us. Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms – and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations. Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths and encourage the arts and commerce. Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah – to ‘undo the heavy burdens … [and] let the oppressed go free’. And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavour, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved. All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
That opening ‘finally’ must make the speechwriter cringe: we’re only halfway through. It is the final part of its own section but it still sounds the only false note in the writing, which is otherwise perfectly controlled. The credit for that is due to Sorensen, who acted as editor-in-chief of the many contributions that Kennedy commissioned. Solicited suggestions came in from the columnists Walter Lippmann and Joseph Kraft, civil rights advisers Harris Wofford and Louis Martin, and the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, along with a pile of unsolicited material. Secretary of State Dean Rusk added phrases. Billy Graham sent a list of possible biblical quotations, as did the leader of Washington’s Jewish Community Council, Isaac Franck. Sorensen held the pen, though, and Galbraith, in particular, was disappointed that so few of his resounding phrases made the final cut. Years later he rather forlornly claimed that among the surviving words of his contribution was the simple refrain: ‘Let us …’
This is the passage in which Kennedy moves the argument on from rigid Cold War binary opposition. The speech does contain plenty of counterpoints to his deliberate show of strength – ‘civility is not a sign of weakness’; the United Nations is ‘our last best hope’; and the need for ‘a grand global alliance’ against ‘the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself’. It would therefore be wrong to read this speech as nothing other than a resilient text of a cold warrior, although that is the essential context. In 1957 the Soviet Union had launched the first space capsule to orbit the earth. West Berlin had been threatened by a Soviet ultimatum. South Vietnam had been menaced by a guerrilla campaign from the communist regime in Hanoi. America felt ill-equipped for the challenge and wanted a strong response. That speech about the peril is in there certainly, but so too are the caveats and the entreaties. Kennedy’s message to Khrushchev is clear. He will stand against armed encroachments, but he wants to lower the temperature with negotiations and cooperation.
In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe. Now the trumpet summons us again – not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need – not as a call to battle, though embattled we are – but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’ – a
