Inaugural Address
Inaugural Address
THE LITERARY WORK
A speech delivered in Washington, D.C., on January 20, 1961,
SYNOPSIS
In his address to the nation on the day of his inauguration as president of the United States, John F. Kennedy outlines his hopes for the future in a world threatened by Cold War hostilities.
Events in History at the Time of the Speech
On the sunny, snow-covered afternoon of January 20, 1961, forty-three-year-old John F. Kennedy assumed the office of the President of the United States. While twenty thousand shivering guests crowded onto the Capitol Plaza in below-freezing temperature, the inaugural team assembled on the dais. The poet Robert Frost recited a piece from memory, since the glare of the sun prevented him from reading the verse he had composed for the occasion. Following the reading, Chief Justice Earl Warren swore in the new president. Kennedy then stepped up to the microphone to deliver a memorable address, which focused on international issues. Keeping the speech short, as was his wont, he had made last-minute changes up until that morning. His text was a collaborative work, composed with Ted Sorensen, his main speech writer since 1954.
Events in History at the Time of the Speech
The road to the inauguration
John F. Kennedy’s inauguration as president of the United States marked the pinnacle of his political career. The first president to be born in the twentieth century, Kennedy brought with him a new era in American politics. He was the youngest elected president in history and the country’s first Roman Catholic head of state as well. With his youth, wit, charm, and Hollywood looks, the president captivated the nation. It has been argued that no leader could better live up to the phrase in Kennedy’s own inaugural address, “the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans” (Kennedy, Inaugural Address, p. 12). Since outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower was seventy, the oldest man ever to hold the office up to that time, and Kennedy was the youngest, the phrase indeed seemed apropos.
Despite his youth, Kennedy had substantial political experience. His career in public service began in 1946 when he won the election for the Eleventh Massachusetts Congressional District in Boston. In 1952, after his three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, Kennedy ran for a seat in the Senate. While popular within his district, he campaigned as the underdog in the statewide senatorial contest against incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. His surprising victory over Lodge proved the influence of both the Kennedy campaign money and the young politician’s charisma.
The following year Ted Sorensen joined Senator Kennedy’s team of assistants, and in 1954 he became Kennedy’s chief speech writer, a role that he would retain for close to a decade. Intimate friends, the men resembled each other in their quick wit and intelligence, sober judgment, and frank verbal expression. The two were so in tune that “when it came to policy and speeches, they operated nearly as one,” said another of Kennedy’s advisers (Schlesinger, p. 208). The drafting of speeches became Sorensen’s most difficult job as Kennedy moved up the political ladder, for Kennedy took his speeches very seriously. “He believed in the power and glory of words—both written and spoken—to win votes, to set goals, to change minds, to move nations” (Sorensen in Kennedy, “Let the Word Go Forth,” p. 1). In 1958 Kennedy easily won reelection to the Senate; two years later he announced his intention to campaign for president.
At a National Press Club meeting in January of 1960, the young candidate declared, “We will need in the sixties a President who is willing and able to summon his national constituency to its finest hour—to alert the people to our dangers and our opportunities—to demand of them the sacrifices that will be necessary” (Kennedy in Giglio, p. 16). It was a theme to which Kennedy would return throughout his campaign and in his inaugural address.
Kennedy quickly won a succession of primary elections, and at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles in July 1960, he earned the nomination of his party. His acceptance speech spoke of standing at a New Frontier of opportunities and perils. This New Frontier, he said, “is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them” (Kennedy, “Let the Word Go Forth,” p. 101).
Facing then-vice president Richard M. Nixon as his Republican opponent, Kennedy embarked on his national campaign. Television had recently become a major cultural influence in America, and the medium proved to be a potent political influence in his campaign. During televised debates, young Kennedy proved himself an equal to the more experienced Nixon. It was said that Nixon lost many votes due to his poor appearance in the first televised debate while Kennedy’s grace and charisma charmed the nation. One survey found that 4 million people made their decisions based on the televised debates; of these, 3 million voted for Kennedy (Giglio, p. 18).
Kennedy nonetheless faced a close election. Out of 68 million votes cast, he won by less than 120,000. This would prove to be the narrowest victory in the history of presidential elections. Prior to the inauguration, Kennedy was well aware of the reservations among some Americans—that he was too young or weak for the job. For this reason, his inaugural address emphasized strength in the face of adversity and commitment to the future. It did so in a speech using techniques that Kennedy had refined over his past fourteen years in politics, techniques that Sorensen identified and employed in his role as Kennedy speech writer.
Speechmaking—the Kennedy style
According to Sorensen, Kennedy never just accepted or delivered a speech without seeing and editing it himself first. “[H]e always upon receiving my draft, altered, deleted or added phrases, paragraphs or pages” (Sorensen, p. 60). There were several rules connected to Kennedy speechmaking. Kennedy was a stickler for keeping his speeches simple and short. He disliked wordy messages, double talk, or tentative words such as suggest. He avoided contractions, elaborate metaphors, and hackneyed or overused expressions, although Sorensen points out that Kennedy had a weakness for one “unnecessary” lead-in: “The harsh facts of the matter are …” (Sorensen, p. 61). At the same time, Kennedy had a keen sensitivity to the rhythm of his speeches. Key words would sometimes rhyme or a sentence would use alliteration, beginning several words with the same sound for the effect on listeners’s ears and to embed his reasoning in their minds.
Kennedy had definite goals in mind for the inaugural address. He wanted it to be short and focused on foreign policy and to respond to a recent speech by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that seemed to call for communist revolution throughout the world. He wanted to offer the Soviets a choice between peace and conflict, to inspire his own people to greatness, and to sound eloquent. Inviting suggestions, he told Sorensen to gather input from everyone. He also asked Sorensen to study Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (also covered in Literature and Its Times) to determine the secret of its success (Sorensen concluded that Lincoln never used a long [two- or three-syllable] word when a short [one-syllable] one sufficed).
The drafting of the address did not begin until about a week before the inaugural. Suggestions had come flooding in by then, “[b]ut however numerous the assistant artisans,” declared Sorensen, “the principal architect of the Inaugural Address was John Fitzgerald Kennedy” (Sorensen, p. 241). This is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that Kennedy was unhappy with all attempts to mention domestic issues; they all, to his mind, sounded too divisive. So he decided to “drop the domestic stuff altogether” (Kennedy in Sorensen, p. 242). The draft was too long anyway, he said. And, while there were serious domestic troubles plaguing the nation at the time, clearly the Cold War and the threat of nuclear destruction were the pre-eminent issues of the day.
The Cold War—the olive branch approach
Much of Kennedy’s speech held out the olive branch, that is offered peace in international relations. In adopting this approach, the president aptly evaluated his audience. Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union had overshadowed most foreign policy of the 1950s. During World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union had fought alongside each other as allies. But afterward the two superpowers clashed as the United States tried to prevent further communist inroads into a war-ravaged Europe.
The westernmost edges of the Soviet Union were bordered by lands buffering it from the remainder of Europe, including Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and the Balkan countries. By the end of World War II, Soviet troops had occupied these lands and areas beyond them, which the Nazis had formerly occupied—for example, Hungary, Austria, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and eastern Germany. The Soviet Union, the world’s only communist nation at that time, subsequently ascended to a position of enormous influence across this portion of Europe, as shown by political developments in the region. Between 1945 and 1948, communist regimes (supported by the presence of Soviet troops and advisors) were installed in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Communism had by the end of 1948 clearly become a leading political force in the world.
The United States, the world’s chief defender of democracy, warily eyed Soviet expansion and set out to contain it from spreading any further. U.S. leaders established a program of economic aid (the Marshall Plan) to war-ravaged countries in Europe, infusing them with capital for defense and rebuilding. In 1949 North America and western Europe forged even closer ties by entering into a mutual defense pact—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO’s members vowed that an attack against one of them would be regarded as an attack against all, to be repelled with joint force.
Meanwhile, the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb in 1949, and the same year Mao Zedong (Tse-tung) led the communists to power in China. The next decade saw Soviet advancements in technology—the Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb in 1953 and successfully orbited a satellite (Sputnik) in outer space in 1957. By the decade’s end, the Soviets appeared capable of sending nuclear warheads into the heart of the distant United States. The Americans had earlier demonstrated their own command of technology by dropping the atomic bomb in World War 11, and detonating a hydrogen bomb in 1952, but U.S. leaders, despite their country’s strength, were anxious about the Soviet Union’s growing military strength. The destruction of all humanity appeared to hang in the balance.
This concern remained in the forefront during the struggle for world leadership between the United States and Soviet Union. Known as the Cold War, it was a struggle that differed from previous conflicts because the opponents refrained from direct combat with each other (hence the term “cold” war). Instead, they competed indirectly in hostile actions outside their own lands. The worst of these actions drew U.S. soldiers directly into battle against Soviet-supported troops—war broke out in Korea (1950-53), for example, and in Vietnam (1957-75), with the Soviet Union and the United States backing opposite sides. Still the two superpowers refrained from fighting each other directly, since each possessed atomic arsenals that could theoretically annihilate the other side.
Kennedy’s address boldly asked both sides to “formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms—and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under absolute control of all nations” (Inaugural Address, p. 14). This point certainly touched an emotional chord in his audience. Because of the political tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, most Americans lived in fear of an eventual nuclear war. Public buildings such as schools erected fallout awnings over their windows to protect the occupants from an atomic blast. A few private citizens even built and maintained their own backyard fallout shelters in anticipation of an eventual nuclear holocaust. When he assumed the presidency, Kennedy knew that he was about to lead a people who feared the possibilities of a Soviet takeover of the United States or their own nuclear destruction.
The Cold War—the militant approach
Kennedy’s address walks a delicate balance. While it offers peace, it also assures the world of America’s military readiness to resist aggression. In his address, Kennedy specifically states, “Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this Hemisphere intends to remain master of its own house” (Inaugural Address, p. 13). This quote summarizes Kennedy’s intentions in relation to the potential spread of communism in the West. Although parts of Europe had been brought under Soviet control, Kennedy intended to keep the balance of power in the West tipped toward capitalist democracy. The area that concerned Kennedy most at the time was the island nation of Cuba, which sat just ninety miles off the coat of Florida.
Cuba’s leader, Fidel Castro, had seized power in 1958, assuming control of property, businesses, labor unions, and the press, as well as the government. Cuba had not yet declared itself a communist nation at the time of Kennedy’s inaugural (it would soon become the first to do so in the Western Hemisphere). It had, however, entered a period of economic and social upheaval, during which Castro singled out the United States as a target, convincing Cubans that the U.S. government sought to invade their tiny island and enslave its inhabitants. Tensions between the two nations mounted until Castro ordered the expulsion of all but eleven members of the American Embassy in the capital city, Havana. In retaliation, the United States reduced the quota of sugar that it purchased from Cuba, further weakening Cuba’s already fragile economy. Left with little choice, Castro turned for aid to Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet president. Khrushchev was, of course, quick to respond to this potential ally in the West. The Soviet Union promised not only economic support, but in 1960 Khrushchev declared, “Soviet artillery can support the Cuban people with its rocket fire if aggressive forces in the [U. S.] Pentagon dare to start an intervention against Cuba” (Khrushchev in Halle, p. 402). Russian technicians and advisors poured into Cuba to assist the tiny country in various areas of development.
Meanwhile, scores of Cuban refugees left their homeland. Fleeing Castro’s rule, the refugees came to Florida at the rate of about a thousand per week. U.S. leaders had been calling for a response to the Soviet influence in Cuba, and a number of them began to view these refugees as a potential rebel army that could overthrow Castro. During the winter of 1960-61, President Eisenhower’s last and President Kennedy’s first days in office, preparations were begun for the invasion of Cuba. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives secretly armed and trained several hundred Cuban refugees, expecting that once they landed in Cuba, the locals would join the anti-Castro struggle and shore up the rebel army.
On January 3, 1961, before Kennedy took office, the U.S. State Department announced that it had severed all diplomatic ties with Cuba because of the seizure of several American firms there. A few months later, on April 17, 1961, President Kennedy authorized the invasion at the Bay of Pigs. It was a disaster—contrary to expectations, local citizens did not join the uprising, and the United States quickly withdrew its support. Almost all the invaders were captured on the beachfront. Far from ending the communist crisis in the Western Hemisphere, the incident only fueled the fires of U.S.-Soviet antagonism, giving Khrushchev further reason to step up a military presence on the island. The tension proceeded to escalate, climaxing in the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, a possibility Kennedy had foreseen in his inaugural address, delivered twenty-one months earlier. Under U.S. pressure, the withdrawal of Soviet missiles would diffuse the deadly crisis.
The Speech in Focus
The contents
On the National Mall in Washington, D.C., having laid down his tophat and overcoat, the newly inaugurated President Kennedy faced his audience. He began his inaugural address with a declaration: “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” (Inaugural Address, p. 12). The statement set the tone for the remainder of the speech, which renews the commitment to liberty made by the founders of the American nation and acknowledges how the world has changed.
The speech notes that humankind’s scientific achievements inspire awe and hope—society now possesses the power to abolish all human poverty and at the same time, with nuclear weapons, to abolish all human life. Pronouncing a willingness to help the nations of the world defend democratic rights, the President proclaimed that
the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans … 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.
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.
(Inaugural Address, p. 12)
He focused in the remainder of his address on foreign policy, making various pledges to the nations of the world. To America’s allies, the speech swears continued support. To republics emerging from colonial control, it pledges respect for their newfound independence. To the millions struggling for survival, it promises to lend a helping hand for however long such a hand is needed:
To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required—not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right.
(Inaugural Address, p. 12)
To the countries of Latin America, the president offered “a new alliance for progress,” then went on to affirm America’s strength. The United States would oppose aggression in the Americas, Kennedy declared in no uncertain terms to the Soviets as much as his fellow citizens. The Western Hemisphere intended to remain master of its own domain. To the United Nations, Kennedy promised support of its ideals. Finally, to those nations “who would make themselves our adversary,” he requested a pursuit of peace, “before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction” (Inaugural Address, p. 13). It is at this point that Kennedy asked both sides in the Cold War to generate proposals for the inspection and control of arms.
All this work, cautioned Kennedy, would not be finished in the first one hundred days of his administration, nor in the first one thousand, but it had to be begun and not by him alone. In fact, said Kennedy, “In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course” (Inaugural Address, p. 14). Democracy had reached its hour of greatest danger, he continued. The challenge was for every American to rise to the defense of freedom in this perilous time, a role that Kennedy said he himself welcomed. He then began his now-famous conclusion:
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.
(Inaugural Address, pp. 14-15)
Those who heard the speech
With the single sentence “ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country,” the president attempted to unite his diverse audience into one people committed to preserving American ideals. Although Americans were united behind the effort to contain communist expansion, they were divided on the domestic front.
At home, the new president faced an array of problems. The civil rights movement had led to violence on the part of Southern law enforcement authorities and a bitterly divided populace. In fact, the day before the inauguration, twenty-three black students had demanded service at segregated lunch counters in department stores in Richmond, Virginia. “You can’t do this,” objected Professor Harris Wofford when Kennedy showed him an advance copy of his inaugural address (Wofford in Reeves, p. 39). Wofford objected because at this point the address did not refer at all to the civil rights struggle at home, whereupon Kennedy, agreeing that he must acknowledge the domestic strife, added the words at home to a sentence in his speech (“those human rights to which this nation has always been committed … at home and around the world”). Those two words were all he added, though. Aware of the issues that divided Americans, Kennedy sought to unite them with nationalist pride. Domestic affairs therefore had little place in his address.
Kennedy further attempted to unify Americans in foreign affairs by taking a militant stand while at the same time offering the prospect of peace. This dual approach succeeded, appealing to both sides of America’s power base—war-ready hardliners and liberals who wanted to ease tensions with the Soviet Union. Republicans who feared that the young president might cave in to Soviet pressures found solace in his strong commitment to American interests abroad. At the same time, Democrats were soothed by Kennedy’s apparent intention to reduce Cold War tensions.
Sources and composition
Though Sorensen drafted the inaugural address, the ideas for it came from Kennedy. Sorensen credits the president with its authorship. “[A]ccuracy, not modesty or loyalty, compels me to emphasize once again that John Kennedy was the true author of all his speeches and writings. They set forth his ideas and ideals, his decisions and policies, his knowledge of history and politics” (Sorensen in Kennedy, “Let the Word Go Forth,” p. 2). In the case of the inaugural, however, the phrasing was largely Sorensen’s, though some of the wording came from Kennedy and others. John Kenneth Galbraith recommended using “cooperative ventures” rather than “joint ventures.” Walter Lipp-man suggested referring to the communist bloc as America’s “adversary” rather than its “enemy.” Dean Rusk advised having the world ponder “what together we can do for freedom” instead of “what you can do for freedom” (Sorensen, p. 243). These were some of the final changes in a labor-intense process that entailed draft after draft of the speech.
First Draft
We celebrate today not a victory of party but the sacrament of democracy.
Next Draft
We celebrate today not a victory of party but a convention of freedom.
Final Text
We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom.
Kennedy made stylistic as well as content decisions along the way. “Let’s eliminate all the Ts’, he said. “Just say what ’we’ will do” (Kennedy in Sorensen, p. 243). Also he kept reworking the ask-not sentence until the morning of the inaugural. Kennedy had used the idea in earlier speeches, such as the July 1960 acceptance speech cited at the beginning of this entry. Thus, his sources were his own words and ideas as well as those of others.
Kennedy’s inaugural drew on past as well as present sources for some of its ideas. The line “In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course” harks back to a line in Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war” (Lincoln in Reeves, p. 39).
Kennedy never memorized his speeches. But once the inaugural address was drafted, he familiarized himself with the speech, and practiced reading it aloud. In the end, all the effort—Kennedy’s, Sorensen’s, and the suggestions of others—paid off. Kennedy’s inaugural was hailed as one of the most remarkable in American history.
Reception of the speech
While reading Thomas Jefferson’s inaugural address, Kennedy quipped, “Better than mine” (Kennedy in David, p. 6). The president, however, proved to be his own worst critic. The New Republic, the National Review, and the New York Times all lauded the speech for its attempt to assuage U.S. and Soviet relations. Members of both political parties also voiced their approval, as indicated by a New York Times headline:
Kennedy Sworn in, Asks “Global Alliance” Against Tyranny, Want, Disease, and War, Republicans and Democrats Hail Address
(Reeves, p. 41)
“That speech he made out there was better than anything Franklin Roosevelt said at his best,” said Congressman Sam Rayburn, “it was better than Lincoln” (Rayburn in Martin, p. 12). Foreign heads of state responded in equally kind terms. Soviet Premier Khrushchev, Harold Macmillan of Great Britain, and France’s Charles de Gaulle all expressed satisfaction with Kennedy’s words. Perhaps most important was the effect the address had on America’s citizens. “It seemed to me,” remembered Sorensen, “as I watched the faces of the crowd that they had forgotten the cold, forgotten party lines, and forgotten all the old divisions of race, religion and nation” (Sorensen, p. 248). At least for the moment, Kennedy’s speech had achieved what it set out to do—it had unified the American people.
For More Information
David, Jay, ed. The Kennedy Reader. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967.
Giglio, James N. The Presidency of John F. Kennedy. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991.
Halle, Louis J. The Cold War As History. London: Chatto & Windus, 1967.
Kennedy, John F. “Let The Word Go Forth”: The Speeches, Statements and Writings of John F. Kennedy, 1947 to 1963. Selected and with an introduction by Theodore C. Sorensen. New York: Delacorte, 1988.
Kennedy, John F. Inaugural Address. In “Let The Word Go Forth”: The Speeches, Statements and Writings of John F. Kennedy, 1947 to 1963. New York: Delacorte, 1988.
Martin, Ralph G. A Hero for Our Time: An Intimate Story of the Kennedy Years. New York: Macmillan, 1983.
Reeves, Richard. President Kennedy: Profile of Power. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965.
Sorensen, Theodore C. Kennedy. New York: Harper & Row, 1965.