JFK and political authorship

Ted Sorenson (from the New York Times Book Review)

Theodore Sorenson, speechwriter for John F. Kennedy, recently published a memoir (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/books/review/Rosenthal-t.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin) and in doing so has dredged up a perenially favorite topic for those in the business of writing about such things: who wrote Kennedy's most famous lines?

That Kennedy had a gift for rhetoric is undeniable. A sizeable part of that gift was in the delivery, but regardless he had a flair for a good line. As Louis Menand pointed out a few years ago in an article in the New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/11/08/041108crbo_books?currentPage=all), Kennedy improvised at thirty-two different points during his one and only famous inaugural address. He went over draft after draft with Sorenson, who saw it as his job to help Kennedy articulate his own ideas in the most effective way possible. To this day, at a point when most people who bother to think about it just assume that someone else is writing every word that comes from a politician's mouth, Sorenson insists that Kennedy's words are Kennedy's words and not his own. It would be fair to say that the two were co-authors; Kennedy was not minimally involved.

As for Kennedy's two most memorable lines, one was a paraphrase. Menand also pointed out that Kennedy's Headmaster at Choate was fond of telling students that it's "not what Choate does for you, but what you can do for Choate." Thus a call for alumni giving became a political catchphrase that defined an era. This is fitting: JFK was in many ways the ultimate prep school boy to the end: popular, aloof, smart, cool, ambitious, more than just a bit cynical in his approach to power and leadership, and he brought all of this with him to the White House. I say this not to degrade Kennedy; I understand the reasons why so many bowed down to the alter, but at the same time no one believes anymore that the man was a perfect savior. Sorenson, by the way, still gives Kennedy the credit for the "ask not" line. As for the other line--"Ich bin ein Berliner"--Sorenson takes credit for the blunder. Though seemingly grammatically correct, the use of the article "ein" renders this an idiom declaring, "I am a jelly doughnut." Nevertheless, we know what Kennedy meant, and this is a powerful line that complements the other from the inaugural two years before. One line asks us to give to others through service to our country. The other asks us to look beyond nationalism and see ourselves as global citizens of the free world. In the end, what matters is how the words were used, and Kennedy certainly used them to good effect at a time when American identity was challenged by the threats--internal and external--of Cold War policy.

What Kennedy and Sorenson both understood is that rhetoric matters, that a meaningful political reality can be crafted out of genuine sentiment well expressed. That explains why Sorenson is an Obama supporter (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/magazine/27wwln-Q4-t.html?scp=7&sq=Deborah+Solomon&st=nyt). It also explains why so many think that Obama has a shot at creating a new kind of political landscape, like the one that Kennedy, for all his faults, started to shape before his assassination.

Will Obama change things? We can hope. The less one pays attention to the current media spectacle--where each candidate is forced situationally into disingenuous and sometimes ludicrous remarks--the better. What we can say about Obama is that he has a flair for rhetoric on par with--perhaps better than--Kennedy's. Let's hope furthermore that Obama, when given the chance, has the audacity to say what he really means. He certainly has the skill to do so. I haven't read The Audacity of Hope and I've only read parts of Dreams from My Father, but what I have read seems to prove that Obama can turn a good sentence, that he is a thoughtful composer of words, that he is--Joe Biden's gaff notwithstanding--indeed very articulate. I am assuming, of course, that Obama and not Ted Sorenson wrote these books.