MATT PORTER: The JFK35 podcast is produced by the JFK Library Foundation and made possible with the help of a generous grant from the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation.
ADAM FRANKEL: The speechwriter's role is to capture the voice of the candidate.
MATT PORTER: President John F. Kennedy is known for being one of the best orators in presidential history. But some of his most iconic speeches came from the mind of a young speech writer from Lincoln, Nebraska. For our first episode back, we'll be looking at the history of presidential speeches, including a look at President Kennedy's most valuable aide and speechwriter, Ted Sorensen. That's next on the first episode of season six of JFK35.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.
[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]
MATT PORTER: Hello, I'm Matt Porter. Welcome to our first episode of season six of JFK35. President Kennedy is remembered for delivering many powerful and inspiring speeches during his time in office. And like most presidents, he had help.
He worked most closely with Ted Sorensen, a young man in his 30s from Lincoln, Nebraska. Sorensen made significant contributions to JFK's most well-known speeches, including the New Frontier speech at the Democratic National Convention, the inaugural address, and Kennedy's address at Rice University calling for NASA to put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade.
We had the privilege of sitting down with Adam Frankel, who not only served as a speechwriter for President Barack Obama, but also worked closely with Ted Sorensen as he crafted his 2008 memoir at Princeton University.
ADAM FRANKEL: Ted and JFK had an incredibly close relationship. JFK called him his intellectual blood bank.
MATT PORTER: When Ted Sorensen met John F. Kennedy as a freshman Senator in 1953, Adam Frankel, a former Obama speechwriter and assistant to Ted Sorensen at Princeton, described the pair as a match made in heaven. Frankel said Sorensen would become more than just the speechwriter for President Kennedy.
ADAM FRANKEL: Ted would sometimes bristle at being described as a speechwriter. Oftentimes speechwriters bristle at being described as just speechwriters, as if it somehow like diminishes or is a narrow description of how they like to see themselves. And in Ted's case, there's a lot of truth in that because he was such an important advisor on a whole bunch of policy issues, effectively serving as a chief of staff. There was no chief of staff in the Kennedy Administration. Ted had effectively served that role. And so for him, he really, I think, occupies a unique role in the history of presidential speechwriting.
MATT PORTER: As a speechwriter himself, Frankel has a deep appreciation for the role Sorensen played.
ADAM FRANKEL: The speechwriter's role is to capture the voice of the candidate. And I've always thought a speechwriter's job is to help reflect the best version of that candidate.
MATT PORTER: Frankel says the job of a speechwriter is about influencing the intended audience's choices. Frankel illustrates his point using an example of candidates running a campaign.
ADAM FRANKEL: Because any election is a choice, and so the speechwriter's job is to help define that choice clearly, both negatively and positively, by painting a picture of why somebody shouldn't vote for the other person, and painting a picture of why they should vote for their candidate. So I think that the speechwriter's job is to capture the voice, to help shape the message, help develop the message, and ultimately inspire people to get out to vote on Election Day.
MATT PORTER: In the 1960 presidential campaign, JFK was dealing with incredibly popular support for the outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Instead of criticizing the previous administration directly, Sorensen and Kennedy leaned into phrases like America can do better and getting America moving again.
ADAM FRANKEL: It's an interesting phrase because it's not a phrase you use when things are going horribly wrong and you need to change course. It's things are maybe going OK, but we need to do better.
MATT PORTER: In addition to crafting the right messages, Frankel said Sorensen was a master at giving feedback to the president.
ADAM FRANKEL: I remember Ted talking about how he used to give JFK feedback. And rather than telling JFK that he hadn't done a particularly good job in a speech, he'd wait until the next time when JFK did deliver really well, and would say, you did a great job today. It was much better than the other night. That was how he delivered his feedback.
MATT PORTER: Kennedy and Sorensen would be the dynamic duo between some of those memorable presidential speeches in modern history.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.
MATT PORTER: Frankel says the speeches remain relevant today because they speak to ideas rather than an individual moment.
ADAM FRANKEL: But the ideas, I think, are still so fresh and so new and so relevant, the ideas of a new frontier not being a set of promises that are being made to people, but a set of challenges that are being asked of people, calling on people to solve big questions that are looming over the country's future on a whole host of issues from science and technology to civil rights. These are ideas that are still relevant today.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: That is the question of the new frontier. That is the choice that our nation must make, a choice that lies not merely between two men or two parties, but between the public interest and private comfort, between national greatness and national decline, between the fresh air of progress and the stale, dank atmosphere of normalcy, between dedication or mediocrity. All mankind waits upon our decision. A whole world looks to see what we shall do. And we cannot fail that trust, and we cannot fail to try.
MATT PORTER: You can read more from Ted Sorensen himself on our podcast page. We have links to Sorensen's oral history preserved right here at the JFK Library.
Coming up next, we'll talk with an expert on presidential rhetoric and look at how other presidents have used the bully pulpit to address voters directly.
Well, thank you. Now joining us is Dr. Vanessa Beasley, PhD, Communications Professor at Vanderbilt University. She's also the incoming President-elect of the Rhetoric Society of America. Dr.Beasley, thanks for joining us.
VANESSA BEASLEY: Happy to be here.
MATT PORTER: Dr. Beasley, we just recently talked about President Kennedy and his relationship with Ted Sorensen. And for President Kennedy, speechmaking and addressing the public directly was so important. Since President Kennedy, how has presidential use of the bully pulpit become more important in this modern era?
VANESSA BEASLEY: President Kennedy was really, as a mid-century president, at the center of a movement that developmentally, we can trace back to the origins of the presidency. So I want to take a minute to talk about how he was in the middle of a big change.
And basically the change is this. Before the 20th century, presidents were not expected to speak to the public at all. In fact, some members of Congress thought that it was unseemly for a president to speak to the public. That was not their job. They should be sitting behind the desk and doing the other requirements that are laid out in the Constitution.
But with the dawn of the 20th century, and of course with the rise of mass media, and I'm going to start with radio in the '20s, presidents had another opportunity to move behind that desk and speak directly to the American people. And what you'll see is over the 20th century, with radio and then later with television, once that door is opened, it just gets open wider and wider and wider.
And there really two things to think about there, and Kennedy's a great example of both of them. One is, why would you want to speak directly to the American people? So you could bypass journalists, right? So in the age of television and its nascent development during the Kennedy era, it was a chance to be the center of journalism, but of course, a chance to make sure you're by passing that filter.
And the second one that Kennedy's era shows us so clearly, too, is it's during the time period in the '50s and '60s when issues of civil rights are changing definitions of whose vote matters and who should get to vote. And if you're thinking about it from a civil rights perspective, speaking directly to the people is also an advantage to presidents.
MATT PORTER: And so as you mentioned, President Kennedy was in the middle of this evolving change. How did this change affect the types of candidates we saw coming to popularity, because I feel like if the ability to speak becomes more important, do we see the different type of candidates coming to be the leaders of their party?
VANESSA BEASLEY: Definitely. I mean, you can absolutely see that with the story that's widely told about President Kennedy, or not yet President Kennedy, debating with Nixon in 1960, and the story about if you saw it on television, you thought that Kennedy won, and if you heard it on the radio, you thought Nixon won.
I think we know a lot more now about how television emphasizes certain parts of characteristics when people are speaking. We know that a great characteristic of many presidents on the Republican and the Democratic field is the ability to act like they are empathetic and communicate directly with American people, and have the camera approach them as if they were speaking directly to people.
So in terms of both style and presentation, I think Kennedy was the canary in the coal mine, if you will, for thinking about how that need and the communication style of a candidate would translate directly to perceptions about electability.
MATT PORTER: So now that direct communication is so important, how did that change the type of politics we saw, on the positive and the negative side?
VANESSA BEASLEY: That's a great question. So I always think of it, on the positive side, it changed access to information. It changed the way, and the dependency, that the voters would have on either the members of Congress, on the newspaper. And in theory, it would open the door to a broader set of information.
Of course, the reason I say in theory is because as soon as that possibility comes up-- and you see this with new media all the time-- as soon as a possibility that you and I might consider to have a democratizing effect, with a little D, comes up with new media, and we say, oh, information wants to be free, politicians and their campaigns-- and it doesn't matter whether they're Democrat or Republican-- will find a way to use that to their strategic advantage and therefore make sure the information that voters are getting is what they want them to hear and what they want them to hear only.
So the positive side of this might be the same thing that opens the door to the negative side of this. And it really just means that consumers and readers and voters have to be very, very careful and critical about the information they get.
MATT PORTER: We started, you talked about how this was a way to go around journalists. How has this ability to speak directly to the public, and as you said, the public needs to really have a critical eye. Has this made journalists' role even more important in the years as it's gone on in this century?
VANESSA BEASLEY: I would argue that it does make journalism more important. It makes journalism more important both for its watchdog function, the classic fourth estate function of journalism that we need some kind of check and balance on any kind of power, but particularly executive power. And then also the idea that it makes journalism more important because it means that you have to think about different ways of reporting on the presidency itself.
So we've seen examples of partisan journalism, where there's almost hagiography happening with the reporting, that the president is so great and can do no wrong. And I'm going to say that happens on both sides, and probably presidents on both sides would love it if it would happen to them. But it just means we have to always consider the source.
And when people say to me that they're worried about a rise in partisan media, I do point out to them that the history of media in the United States is partisan media. We've actually had fewer times in our nation's history in the '40s, '50s, and '60s, where one of them, when people said they wanted quote, unquote objective media, because if you go back to the 19th century you'll see that it's almost exclusively partisan media. So there's just a rich history there, which ultimately puts the burden on the consumer/voter.
MATT PORTER: Yeah, the idea that I think a lot of people think that objective media has had a long history United States. But what you're saying is a little bit of the opposite.
VANESSA BEASLEY: It's quite the opposite. It's actually sort of the exception to the rule. And it's really interesting to think about the origins of that sense of objectivity is really with the rise of outlets like the Associated Press, or the ability to say there's one set of news that goes to the whole nation.
I'm frankly very interested in the way the development of that press in the post-Civil War period starts to mean that we start to think about the president as representing all the people and gives that symbolism to the presidency, as opposed to the previous model, which would have said the person who represents you is your member of Congress.
MATT PORTER: You mentioned that presidents really stayed out of the political fray. Like I think John Adams writes about it being very undignified to talk to the press or go out there and campaign. Obviously that's a long time ago, but I know that's been, as you said, the history, that as presidents started to engage to the public directly, that journalists saw their role as fact checking what the president is saying to the public?
VANESSA BEASLEY: Yes. That's one of the roles for journalism that developed was that fact checking role. And we still see that today. You'll still see that after any kind of campaign speech or debate now, is looking for the, depending on your media outlet, the Pinocchio scale.
But the other thing that also happens during this time, which is fascinating, and the Kennedy era is such a great example, is that newspapers start to realize that there's more than one kind of reporting that will be attractive to their consumers.
And so during the '40s, '50s, and '60s, you also see the development of style pages, where the president ate last night and what the first lady's wearing, where that becomes part of the presidential coverage. And it goes to this issue of when the presidency itself, or more to the point, who can run for the presidency, who can successfully lead, starts to take on that dimension that to some observers seems a little bit too close to celebrity. But again, once you get that genie out of the bottle, there's no way to put it back in, and it becomes part of the way the office is understood.
MATT PORTER: It's, you mention, you talk about celebrity because Ronald Reagan was an actor before being president, Donald Trump well-known in television and as an entertainer of sorts, although also known as a businessman before being elected. Did the genie that you're talking about being out of the bottle, did that sort of boost these types of candidates that are not necessarily from strong, heavy political backgrounds, but almost having to have sort of a background in communication?
VANESSA BEASLEY: No question about it. In addition to having a crack speechwriting team, which is always important-- when people say, well, does it really matter if they have good speechwriters? It absolutely matters if they have great speechwriters.
But it's also about the face delivering the message. And I think in a way what you can see, even in an internet age, is the power of the image, the power of not just the talking head and the way a president communicates, but also the warmth and the other qualities that a presidential persona can exude.
And of course, every presidential campaign after 1960 figured out a way to represent their candidate in exactly the way they wanted to do it, with stagecraft, some people would say, being just as important as statecraft.
MATT PORTER: Yeah. And stagecraft, and the messages. How do you deliver the message? I think President Barack Obama remarked, or at least certainly his staff have talked about how his style was always to give an hour long explanation of things that he's talking about. But his staff would often urge him to be simpler, present the message more simply. Do messages in the modern era have to be simplified as they communicate to these mass audiences?
VANESSA BEASLEY: Yes. And there's evidence of that on two registers. One is there are people who study the range of vocabulary and the syntax in presidential speech. And they would say that the reading level, if you will, has declined over time. So another way of saying that is the presidents and their speechwriters are always gearing their language to a lower reading level, a less educated baseline, if you will. And that again, is true on both sides of the aisle.
The other way of thinking about what you're just describing is thinking in terms of soundbites. And we've been paying close attention to that ever since the Reagan era, that a speech is only as good as the 30 seconds that get replayed on the evening news. And so especially when we're looking at long speeches like State of the Union addresses, you really have to make sure that you're thinking through the parts that people are going to take away.
MATT PORTER: So you mentioned the Reagan era. What about that particular era, that presidency, changed the game, where you said ever since, the messages have gone more simple. What didReagan do that was so-- maybe some people probably criticized it, but some probably say that's what made him the great communicator, as he's referred to.
VANESSA BEASLEY: So Reagan's presidency is when we see an incredible emphasis on the visual politics and the visual representation of the presidency. Look for any image or look for any video of Reagan giving a speech, and you can see, really obviously, especially with our eyes now, the dedication with which somebody went through and made sure every aspect of that scene was there fora reason.
And that's true whether he's in the Rose Garden or whether he's in some of the photographs you'll see of him on his ranch in his Western wear. So when we think about the way that we'll never go back after to the Reagan presidency, it's the level of choreography, not necessarily the words, but of the images. And I think, actually, you could argue that the Kennedy presidency started to lay the groundwork for that, too. But it just came to fruition in a very clear way during the Reagan years.
The second thing that Reagan did that changed everything was use what we would call representative anecdotes as evidence. So Reagan is the person who made sure that the story he wanted to tell in the State of the Union address was actually embodied in a person who was sitting next to the First Lady in the gallery.
And if you look at State of the Union address since then, it's not just that we're having a special guest there, which is a nice thing in itself. It's that the guest is there to make a public policy argument.The presence of this person makes an argument in favor of the policy the president's trying to talk about.
Public policy is really hard to talk about on television, as you said earlier with the comment about Obama. Some presidents who go on and on about public policy-- and I'd say Clinton and Obama were accused of their staffs of doing this too much-- are perceived as being out of touch or too professorial, in Obama's case.
And so what do you need to do to make an effective public policy argument? You need to tell a story. You need to have a person. In Obama's case, actually, on one of his State of the Unions, I believe2014, he had a woman in the box next to Mrs. Obama who had just recently been able to sign up for Obamacare, and therefore she got a life-saving surgery that if she'd needed a few weeks before, she wouldn't have been able to have. That tells a public policy story. Reagan opened the door for that, and presidents have never gone back since.
MATT PORTER: Really interesting. The real people, as some journalists call when they use someone in their story. One question I have is there's a lot of critics out there who would now say that whole idea of stagecraft, simplified messages, finding the perfect anecdote that illustrates your story or trying to keep to the emotions of the listener, there are a lot of critics that say that that's sort of gone out of control at this point and is maybe contributing to a very divided country. Do you think that those critics are right, or what extent do you think that those critics have a point?
VANESSA BEASLEY: I think those critics are nostalgic. If you look back to contentious presidential elections, let's say even the election of 1800, you'll see that there's always been very clear plays to emotion, and particularly the emotions of hatred and fear of the other party or what the other party will do.
So that part's not new. And what we're talking about, the level of picking out clips or soundbites, you could argue that's what would end up in a pamphlet in the 19th century. So people who are saying, oh, the level of discourse has changed now, I'm not sure it's changed with respect to the way presidents have tried to communicate, either through the media or directly to the American people.
I think my argument would be what has changed is the way Congress uses that discourse and Congress uses deliberative space to talk about its arguments. You could say that the trends that we’ve seen in the presidents and its discourse have probably filtered down to Congress. And that's a different kind of question about where you need, if you will, a safer space to deliberate, where people are given the opportunity not just to argue with each other, but also to listen to each other, and perhaps maybe even be persuaded.
MATT PORTER: So the decorum in Congress is the problem more so than the messaging from the presidents.
VANESSA BEASLEY: That's what I would argue. And other people have argued that there's a direct relationship between Congress changing, and also the way that media has made, perhaps, viewers think about the president as a superhero who can sort of swoop in and make a great speech and change everything right away, when in fact, the legislative body and the legislative processes are more dependent on other parts of government.
MATT PORTER: Do you think that backfires on a candidate when, for example, President Obama, obviously, is probably a good example of promising a lot of change. But then he was stymied by an opposition Congress for most of his two terms. like does that backfire on a president, maybe hurt or their party when they can't fill those great promises?
VANESSA BEASLEY: I don't know that it backfires on a president as much as it does begin a new narrative about the presidency. So even now, and of course, when we talk about recent history, we have to think about other actors. In the case of Obama, when you tell the story you were just mentioning, you immediately think about Mitch McConnell and his very explicit pledges to stop Obama from being able to legislate.
So it's less about a backfiring and more about a particular kind of narrative that may lead voters to think, oh, is just how this is. And some people have argued that will promote cynicism. That will promote the idea that no matter who's in office or how much change they are promised as a function of getting elected, that once they get into office, everything changes and there's a narrative about being inside the Beltway and being stuck.
MATT PORTER: Thinking about the past presidents since John F. Kennedy and their communication styles, who do you rank among some of the best and who do you rank among some of the worst as far as their communication style?
VANESSA BEASLEY: Yeah. Well, I'm going to give one answer on the best that's going to seem a little bit counter intuitive because for my money, one of the best singular speeches was a speech that Lyndon Johnson gave shortly after he became president after Kennedy's assassination. And this is his March, 1965 speech that's now known as We Shall Overcome.
When I talk to students about this speech, I always try to get them to imagine, think about being Lyndon Johnson and stepping in front of a camera, and obviously a mourning nation. But the person who has preceded you, in addition to being a promising leader, is also, as we've been discussing, one of the most telegenic leaders the nation's ever seen, and the medium of television's new.
So Lyndon Johnson takes to the bully pulpit in one of his first opportunities to do so as president, and starts to talk about civil rights. In fact, this is a joint address to Congress, which is the first time he's spoken to both houses of Congress, and starts to talk about civil rights and starts to talk about the fact that now that he is president, he's going to use it. He's going to use the presidency to make changes, and those lines are very famous.
And I think that's an important speech because it talks about, in explicit ways, not just the power of the office. But you also see, as you go through that speech, him making arguments that are arguments on the public policy, as we've been discussing, on the face of it, and how that policy will be implemented.
But there's also a long set of arguments that are basically about ideals and what America's supposed to be. He has famous passages where he says--and I'm paraphrasing-- there is no southern problem. There is no northern problem. This is an American problem. And so that ideal-driven argumentation, I would argue, is part of what's unique to a president. Presidents, when they occupy that bully pulpit, are the only people who can claim American ideals as part of their argument.
So that speech, to me, really shows an opportunity to take a heavily, highly mediated moment and make an argument about doing something because it's right, because it's the right thing to do. Incredibly controversial, what he's arguing for at the time, incredibly controversial. So it's not an easy argument. But to me, that one stands out both because of the circumstance and because of what I'm going to call the eloquence of the speech.
We've been talking some about Reagan. I think one of the things that people remember the most about his speeches are his campaign speeches. He was an excellent campaigner, and he also had the ability, particularly as he ran for office the second time, to talk about ideas of a promise not yet fulfilled.
So you remember all the language in the Reagan presidency and maybe even associate it with this idea of morning in America, and giving people the idea that if you would keep him in office, you would have the ability to think about not just what's good for the country, but also what's good for you.
And I would say one of Reagan's skills, and you see this throughout his speeches, is taking individual circumstances, such as people he would bring to the State of the Union, and attaching them back again to Reagan's view of American ideals. Again, very controversial. But being the person who says, in the name of these ideals, I claim this policy, and this is the way it's going to help this person.That kind of tripartite detachment was one of his skills.
And then the last person that I'll is as one of the great models of public speaking is President Obama. I think that it's well-known, as you said earlier, what a professorial style he has. But I think many people would talk about some of the speeches that he gave, particularly about race and civil rights towards the end of his presidency-- and frankly, even after his presidency, in some cases-- showed the ability for a new way of speaking that we hadn't always heard presidents engage in before, perhaps even going back to Johnson, where they talked about racism specifically as an American problem.
MATT PORTER: And who were some of the people that had more trouble communicating?
VANESSA BEASLEY: So famously, Jimmy Carter had difficulty with using speeches as a medium. He is often associated with the opposite of that kind of Reagan optimism, which is some sense of pessimism. I think he gets a little bit of a bad rap on that. But it is true that once that perception started with his addresses, it was hard to avoid.
And then the other two presidents--and that gives away what I'm going to say next-- who would say they were uncomfortable-- I've heard say were uncomfortable with the level of public speaking that was required and television appearances-- were Bush, Sr. and Bush, Jr., for lack of a better word.
And I really appreciate the explicit attention, when they made remarks in their post-presidency periods, in both cases, have said, that was hard for me. Now I think in the latter case, the post-9/11discourse is where he made his mark. And that's one of those cases were extraordinary circumstances do require an extraordinary ability to communicate with the American people.
MATT PORTER: We've been talking a lot about what's changed since President Kennedy. But are there fundamentals of presidential rhetoric that you've seen that haven't changed over the course ofUS history?
VANESSA BEASLEY: Yes. I have argued in many things that I've written that the one constant in presidential rhetoric, beginning with Washington and up till today, is that it has to provide an iteration of American national identity, what it means to be an American.
Because of a history of enslaved people, because of a history of immigration, because of a history of women not having the right to vote until 1920, this notion of American identity doesn't have the same kind of static components that you would in other countries that went back to the Renaissance or a feudal period, where the identity was really attached to a particular kind of nationalism in the pre-nation state.
So in the United States, you have to have somebody who stands up and speaks, in theory, for all the people. And whether or not it's a progressive candidate or president, or whether or not it's a conservative candidate or president, there has to be a recurring theme. And what I've seen in this discourse is this theme that America is an idea. It's available to anyone who will take it as their pledge and their idea.
And this is a rhetoric that speaks to notions of social mobility, and it also speaks to notions of American exceptionalism, particularly with regard to this idea that the nation has been favored by providence, and in some cases, presidents will even say favored by God.
So it's possible to talk about why and how that's a good way to talk about nationalism, and also the underside of that and how it could be a dangerous way to talk about nationalism.
MATT PORTER: Really interesting. And I have two more questions, maybe not quick. First is, the office of the president is often described as the most powerful office in the world, or the leader of the free world, or these very large terms that is the most powerful office in the land.
As far as a bully pulpit or as far as the speaking portion, is the president-- they clearly have an outside voice compared to others, but is it as big as many people build up to be? Does the president have that much power with his words that some people say that he or she would?
VANESSA BEASLEY: It depends, the answer. And here's what it depends on. It depends on how you define power, and it depends on how you define time. So I'm going to be more specific. And we'll go back to Johnson. if you're talking about the idea that American racism is a structural systemic problem, you can say that Johnson won the short game in 1965 because of the legislation he got passed. But it has been said by Bill Moyers and others that he lost the long game because it turned Southern Democrats against the party to become Republicans.
But you could also say that when you look back on some of Johnson's speeches now, you see work that's unfinished, and you say, oh, wow, depending on how you judge his effectiveness, your theory of history, if you will, is maybe a dialectic, that maybe that needed to happen for other things to happen later.
So when you talk about power in the sense you're talking about it, it's really power to set an agenda, power to get the focus of the American people, and yes, the media, and yes, increasingly the globe, power to set, obviously, a policy agenda. And we do see the power expanding over time from Kennedy's day to today, executive power no question has expanded.
Every new president, Republican or Democrat, is going to make it expand further. That's the way that works. So when we talk about executive orders and that kinds of things, where presidents are using their speech but not in an oratorical sense-- the stroke of the pen set the policy-- that's just the way the development of the office works if left unchecked. And that won't change either.
So that's why I say it depends on the way you define power. Nobody commands a public spotlight the way a president does. A president's words can change a market. They take people to war. And yet you also have to think about the idea that it sets an agenda ideologically that may take multiple generations to think through. And again, you can see evidence of that in both Republicans and Democrats.
MATT PORTER: Yeah, it really is a powerful position to be in, no question. But how you use it is really important, it seems.
This is a JFK Library podcast, JFK Library Foundation podcast. So we do want to end it with a question about President Kennedy. And the question I want to ask you is, they say Americans are famous for their short memories. But when it comes to JFK's speeches, especially some of his bigger ones, people have remembered them for their lives. He's constantly requoted and requoted. It seems like a lot of his speeches have a lot of staying power. Why do you think that is?
VANESSA BEASLEY: That's a great question. I love thinking about this in the dimension of when they happened, and it's credit to his speechwriters, of course, but also credit to the educational system he came from. His speeches were just beautiful, and they had grammatical constructions in them that you have to believe, when you listen to tapes of him engaging in them now, came easily to him because he did understand things about the way grammar and prose worked.
And I think you've heard you've heard this about Bobby Kennedy, too, that their understanding of things that the Greeks thought about informed the way they thought about politics. So I think that’s about the kind of educational system that a good orator comes from. And that's, frankly, been something that the classics, even back to Cicero, talked about. There's an education that's required to be a good statesperson, statesman.
And then the other thing you'd have to say about the way people think about Kennedy is probably not a unique comment for me to make. But it's the way it captured the imagination of the American people, both then and now, not just about what was possible in the moment, but also about the potential in the future of the country. And of course, in a way, that takes on a mythic legacy that does make his speeches more important now.
MATT PORTER: Yeah. It's no surprise the President Kennedy was the first president to have a poet at his inauguration. He placed so much emphasis on language and the future of mankind. You don't hear presidents talk about things like that in that way very often.
VANESSA BEASLEY: It's a great point. And I think what's really interesting about larger forms of public discourse right now in the United States, we've seen from lots of quarters, like the corporate world-- think about higher education. We talk about being data driven. We talk about wanting to make sure that we have good evidence. We talk about knowing the science behind everything. And of course we do. Of course those things are true.
But it's also true that we need a world with art in it. It's also true that we need a world where leaders use words that are aspirational, that challenge us to be different versions of ourselves. Of course, that's why Abraham Lincoln is quoted so often for his first inaugural.
So thinking about that really does make you get back to this definition of what leadership is. And I'm going to say the paradox of the more networked we get, the more different kinds of communication we have, the more some of those classic ideas of having a leader who you sort of stop and put down what you're doing and think, I needed to hear that, or I need to think about that, orI need to go back and read more about that. That may be the thing that we need the most, the art of getting people to stop and listen.
MATT PORTER: Well, I will keep listening, and this has been a great interview. Thank you, Dr. Beasley. I really appreciate you having you on.
VANESSA BEASLEY: My pleasure. Thanks for the invitation. I enjoyed it.
MATT PORTER: Thank you.
And with that, we wrap up this first episode of our new season. Visit our podcast page at jfklibrary.org/jfk35, where we'll have more information on topics mentioned in this episode, including links to Ted Sorensen's oral history.
If you have questions or story ideas, please email us at jfk35pod@jfklfoundation.org, or tweet at us @JFKLibrary using the hashtag JFK35. If you liked what you heard today, please consider subscribing to our podcast or leaving us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening, and have a great week.