RobertEmmet

By Robert Schlesinger

The new meme emerging from both the once-and-future GOP frontrunner and once-future Democratic top-dog is that deeds trump words.

“There’s a big difference between us – speeches versus solutions, talk versus action,” Hillary Clinton said recently.

“There is going to come a time when we have to get into specifics, and I’ve not observed every speech that he’s given, obviously, but they are singularly lacking in specifics,” McCain said.

These are of course references to Democratic front-runner Barak Obama, or as some have dubbed him, JFK II. The comparison is clear: Two young senators campaigning on eloquent messages of change. What the Obama critics might not realize is that among the foremost skeptics of the power of rhetoric was … John F. Kennedy.

There is no question that JFK understood the power of rhetoric, as evidenced by the care with which he approached public communications. A poor speaker when he first ran for Congress in 1946, JFK developed the skill well enough that he is now remembered for his words – which went forth, passed the torch, declared us all Berliners on this small planet in an ancient moral issue – more than anything else. Ted Sorensen, JFK’s top domestic aide and speechwriter, is widely credited as the source of the young president’s rhetorical power, but this is a gross simplification that does neither man justice: Sorensen helped amplify Kennedy’s voice, but it was the president’s. (For more, I commend you to my forthcoming history of presidential speechwriting, White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters.)

But JFK also knew the limits of rhetoric. He liked to quote from Shakespeare – Henry IV, Part I. When Owen Glendower would boast that he could “call spirits from the vasty deep,” Hotspur would reply that he could too, “so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?” Anyone can talk a good game, in other words, but does action follow the rhetoric? On consecutive days in June, 1963, JFK gave two of his most eloquent and important speeches. On June 10, he spoke at the American University of global peace: “In the final analysis,” he said, “our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

The following day, he addressed the nation about domestic tranquility, talking about the country’s festering civil rights problems. It was a long time coming: Critics had complained that he had been too silent on the great moral question facing the country. Kennedy took a pragmatic view and had not been moved to expend political capital if it could not produce real results. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the historian, Kennedy assistant and, later, my father, wrote in his diary that JFK’s reaction was “disappointing.” “Even if he has no power to act, he has unlimited power to express the moral sense of the people,” Schlesinger wrote. “And in not doing so, he is acting much as Eisenhower used to act when we denounced him so.”

After the confrontation in Birmingham peaked, JFK decided the time was right to use the bully pulpit. It was, he said, a “moral issue … as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.”

When Schlesinger praised the speech the president was dubious, noting that an administration-backed redevelopment bill had suffered a surprise defeat in the House the following day. Words were fine, he was saying, but hadn’t produced results. (“But of course I had to give that speech,” JFK said after a pause, “and I am glad that I did.”) When Schlesinger was in the Oval Office on June 20, JFK was given a White House mail breakdown. Fifty-thousand letters had come in, of which fewer than 1,000 related to American University, fewer than 3,000 to civil rights and more than 28,000 focused on a freight rail bill.

“He is deeply – excessively – skeptical about the value of speeches per se,” Schlesinger later wrote in his diary.

Flash forward 45 years. JFK is principally remembered as maker of speeches, the skepticism – rarely if ever publicly expressed – forgotten. And the torch has been passed, with Obama assuming the role of magical speech-giver. How do Obama – or either of the other two remaining candidates for the White House – view the role of public communications? It is at this stage impossible to know. Sens. Clinton and McCain cannot match up with Obama, so they have to discount the value of speeches, per se. For Obama it’s the fastball nobody has been able to hit yet, so he has had little reason to switch up.

This is the bottom line: Rhetoric and practical results are to presidents, to use a historical analogy, like Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. Both elements are ultimately required for success. (Not a popular analogy, perhaps, but that’s another discussion entirely.)