JFK: A Vision for America

first I want to thank our sponsors our lead sponsor Bank of America and the Lowell Institute and the media sponsors the globe affinity and WBUR you also I think all know that this is a centennial of John Kennedy's birth we have lots of special activities there are several other forums I encourage you to look at the website and there's some flyers out on the table we have a new exhibit that's opening next week on the 26th and has amazing things 100 items of which 40 have never been seen before so encourage you to come back to look at that exhibit and many other things but tonight's book before I talk about the speakers I just want to talk about this incredible book and if you haven't had a chance to read it yet I encourage you to do that and we're selling them later and they'll be the the editors will be signing them later it is really a amazing collection of national and international leaders that have commented on some of very important speeches that President Kennedy gave plus other things I'm just going to read a sentence from The Washington Post review all the reviews are amazing about this book the post said quote ultimately The Collection illustrates Kennedy's wide-ranging knowledge and curiosity sense of importance of public service and international cooperation belief in religious diversity commitment to deliberate action and negotiation respect for the position of the presidency love of the country and Rich understanding of History so it really adds a lot to our current dialogue and to add even more we have three incredible speakers with many many awards among them I won't go through all of that because that would take you a whole hour and a half to list their many awards and accolades but very briefly our moderator Harvard Professor Fred largoval who's a professor of international Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School and professor of History he has many books to his credit and he is also writing a book now about John F Kennedy the two editors Stephen Kennedy Smith and Doug Brinkley Stephen Kennedy Smith is this is by the uh we're kidding on the elevator down you're all in the Smith Center we did not rename it for tonight's event it was named after Steve's father and the amazing work that Steve's father did and contributed in so many different ways not just to this institution but to the Kennedy administration but Stevens on the board of the John F Kennedy Library Foundation worked so hard on this as a companion um show at the Smithsonian and many other things to his names Doug Brinkley professor at Rice University many of us have seen him I saw him actually this weekend on CNN and many of us have learned so much from him and has also received many many awards so with that join me to welcome them and again afterwards they'll be signing books and then after that there'll be a brief reception where we're joining the New Frontier Network and all of your accordion invited to that reception so with that please join me to welcome them [Music] so good evening it's just a pleasure to be with you this evening to talk about our 35th president and I was reflecting on a couple things on the drive over here one is that to me it's just it's it's remarkable to think about the fact that it's a hundred years since John Fitzgerald Kennedy made his entry into the world and this little guy who was sick so much as a as a Young Man became became present and to have an opportunity this evening to talk about that and to talk about the presidency and maybe also a little bit about what led him there I think it's just a great opportunity I also thought about the the first hundred days because we've just experienced obviously the first hundred days with our current incumbent and I reflected on something many of you are probably familiar with which is that John F Kennedy um worried about uh the Miracles that his administration was supposed to achieve in those first hundred days and he said to Ted Sorensen he said you know let's put into the inaugural something about the fact that this won't be achieved in the first hundred days or the first thousand because that became Sorensen did what he was told Sorensen was a master Wordsmith as we all know uh and that became a kind of classic formulation a classic part of this very important speech all this will not be finished in the first hundred days or the first thousand or in the life of this Administration or even the lifetime that we have here on Earth but let us begin I thought about that too on the drive over it's a an honor to be able to moderate this discussion as Stephen said I think this is just a marvelous book and one of the things that I think is and I want to ask Stephen about this that I think is such a such a penetrating way to proceed is to frame this book around a set of speeches many of which we know but also I dare say many speeches that we're not very familiar with and that to me even as a biographer of John F Kennedy and I'm I've done much of the research I've begun writing my book and yet I'm embarrassed to tell you that there were speeches in this book that I didn't really know so to have the speeches in between two covers than to have essays by a very a varied and distinguished group of of writers I think was just a master stroke so maybe maybe we can begin Stephen by having you just reflect for us on what led you to pursue this particular approach to the book because I think people would be interested in that sure um so welcome everyone it's great to have you here I actually started the book during the campaign I picked up a book of world's greatest speeches and in this beat in the book was a speech that President Kennedy gave at Amherst University his tribute to Robert Frost and um he said that our national strength matters but the spirit which informs and controls that strength matters even more the men who make um The Men Who wield power make an indispensable contribution to our nation's greatness but the men who criticize power make it equally indispensable contribution and I thought nobody talks in that kind of language in this election they don't talk in military in philosophical and moral terms they don't um educate people about what it means to be a citizen what it means to be an American and so I think the fundamental idea that I had behind the book was how do we make President Kennedy's ideas relevant to today and so I asked the people that I thought John F Kennedy would respect to take a look at his various speeches and give me their thoughts and so we have everyone in the book from his Holiness a Dalai Lama who commented on his speech on religious discrimination as did Pastor Rick Warren to Henry Kissinger and John McCain who wrote about his view of foreign policy and its relevance to today to some of our nation's great writers like Dave Eggers and Don delillo who wrote about his view of the artist in a free Society and so what I really wanted and forgive the speech but you asked a question of a political family um um but but um you know I believe that President Kennedy had it really did have a vision of America that he drew from his readings of History going all the way back to the Greek idea of the polis and the Roman idea of virtue or civic virtue and this idea essentially was that a great society is not comprised of the pursuit of material wealth or military power alone it is comprised of the artistic contribution of that Society its moral principles and and its overall contribution is he put it to the human spirit and if you look at his body of work that's what he's trying to communicate to Americans and that's really fundamentally where this idea of the citizen you know as the fundamental basis of a successful Society comes from and he probably articulated that idea as well as anyone in American history outside of Abraham Lincoln I think he also happens to be according to Conan O'Brien our nation's funniest president outside of Abraham Lincoln if you read Conan's essay in the book so that so um no that's terrific so Doug you're a co-editor what's if I may ask what's a theme in in doing this project and of course you've written about Kennedy in other contexts as well but what's maybe a theme that stands out for you in putting this book together theme pertaining to Kennedy or his administration well to begin with you know this book is a gift to the nation because it's John F Kennedy's 100th birthday and happy birthday Jack Kennedy we needed to do something and Stephen took the reins and and drove this home we wanted he's such an important American figure we needed something that would last for the ages and his books seem to have longevity doing award programs and firework displays and all are great but they go quickly into the night and other other news stories come into place we thought this book might anchor the Centennial of John F Kennedy I grew up loving Jack Kennedy partially because he was Catholic and I'm Catholic that seemed to mean an awful lot to my mom and dad when I was a boy I think it means a lot to people around the world if you go to Mexico or Latin America or Eastern Europe or or Catholic countries the fact that a paradigm was broken of all these you know never a Catholic before and you know just as Barack Obama was able to shatter a glass ceiling with being the first African-American president I did my doctorate in Cold War history and I really have been amazed at how astutely Kennedy got us through the Cuban Missile Crisis and how cleverly he dealt with the Berlin crisis Kidman Missile Crisis you all know about but how perilously close we were to a horrific nuclear Showdown and anything could have happened and the way Kennedy calmly we have the ex-con tapes White House tapes to listen to Listen to Everybody bounced ideas got all the information and and wisely decided not to try to bomb those launch sites but to go with the Embargo route and then do back Channel diplomacy with the Soviet Union and not only were we able to get out of that the Cuban Missile Crisis unscathed but I think it becomes the beginning of the end of Khrushchev the backing down people talk about the deal that was made by Bobby Kennedy and all with the Jupiter missiles in turkey and all this and you know the but the truth is you can see America prescending in power while the the Khrushchev starts going into the dustband of History almost simultaneously and then the Berlin Wall crisis I love the city of Berlin where I teach at Rice University we have a hunk of the Berlin Wall in front of our public policy Center but the fact is there that many people when the walls are being built wanted that wall hit let's knock it down the fact that Kennedy had to endure what seemed to be an embarrassment of the wall being built and you know uh results of the not so successful Vienna conference between Khrushchev and Kennedy and yet he was able to take the wall and flip it go to Berlin and give that speech there when he said I'm a you know I to him of Berliner and used the Berlin Wall is what kind of sick deranged people have to wall in their own citizens well truly it and it resonates on the Centennial to me when we're we're looking at this idiocy of building a wall in um on the Mexican border and here Kennedy was about no walls no boxes that freedom lives through everywhere and a friend of mine right now is going down to the border with Mexico they're doing a great arts project that John F Kenny would have liked I mean music on both sides of the border that that you know playing right on the on one one side where it's blocked by Tijuana one in San Diego and they're doing this huge Festival on both sides um and so those are two really important Cold War moments that I studied a lot and then thirdly the speech in the book The nuclear test span treaty the American University speech I'm sure you know it's one of the co-player we're going to play good great important speech I'm writing environmental history right now a lot and John F Kennedy saved Cape Cod which um Cape Cod National Seashore which the Trump Administration is trying to unravel right now as we speak I hope you all read the Boston Globe yesterday um and you know he saved Point Raise the great Barry Island Texas um the um you know Marin you know Marin's all over these places start pushing forward Wilderness acts but starting the process of stopping the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons and how significant that speech and that treaty was those three have stayed with me for a long time in my career we thought it would be fun to uh interesting to play some clips and the one the first one one I want to play speaks to what Stephen said a few minutes ago about John F Kennedy's wit and his humor one of the essays in the book that I really like is in fact the the essay by Conan O'Brien and this clip that we're going to show I think gives a sense of this it also does something else which it shows a sense of how John F Kennedy related to to the media he had been a journalist himself at least flirted with the idea briefly of becoming a journalist I think when I look at his dispatches from 1945 I see a guy with some real talent I think he could have gone in that direction if he wanted but I think it gave him an appreciation if he didn't have it before of what journalists do he'd had read the New York Times ever since he was a kid and I think understood what journalists do it didn't by the way keep him from being partially critical in private of certain journalists when he was president but but you see uh I think he liked journalists um related to them and so this little short clip gives us sense of this and then I want to follow up with a question for for Stephen about it could we roll this first one speaking of historians induces me to ask you this most former presidents have put their official papers in libraries in their home states where they are not readily available to Scholars and historians who've come here to work with the Library of Congress and other agencies here have you decided where to put yours and would you consider putting it in Washington yes I'm going to put it in Cambridge Massachusetts thank you it's been a long time since a president and his family has been subjected such to such a heavy barrage of teasing and fun poking and satire I mean they've been booked on Backstage or back stairs at the White House and cartoon books with clever sayings and a photo albums with balloons and the rest and now I uh Smash Hit the record can you tell us whether you read and listen to these things and whether they produce annoyment or enjoyment [Music] annoyment uh no they produce yes I have read them and listened to them actually I listened to Mr meader's record but I thought it sounded more like Teddy than it did me but uh Mr President in the 1960 campaign you used to say that it was time for America to get moving again do you think it is moving and if so how and where did I ask you the question Mr President that the Republican National Committee recently uh adopted a resolution saying you were pretty much of a failure I sure was passed unanimously gives you a little sense of Trey Steven about this particular essay and I think if I'm not mistaken Conan O'Brien actually spoke here at the library of six months or so ago and talked a little bit about this but was this an essay Stephen that you wanted to Commission because you thought that this was an important part of of who JFK was did did Mr O'Brien propose it to you how did this come about so my father was the campaign manager for President Kennedy and our family his family was in the tugboat business in New York it was Cleary Brothers tugboats and President Kennedy used to call him tugs and he called me tugs Jr um but he gave my father um some wood carvings of drunks that were swinging off lampposts looking really inebriated three of them and he put underneath them one Cleary brother another Cleary brother another clue and my father had them in his office so he had a really good sense of humor um and that's obviously one of the notable things about um JFK so yeah we thought it was important to capture that that aspect of his his Persona yeah and as I said I I think the two of you agree that I think that O'Brien he gets at some of this in a short essay that it's not just about playing funny or or having somebody write funny things for you but in fact it's part of you know who he is right so um what what Conan writes about actually is the connection between humor and suffering and there's a quote from Tennessee Williams that I like that a high station in life is won by the gallantry which one with which one faces appalling circumstances with Grace and I think that um you know President Kennedy obviously lost his his brother and sister during the war he had intense physical pain for most of his life and what I find impressive about him you know having having now gone through the histories and the and the speeches and his philosophy of life is that he used this kind of as a motivating factor you know to try to make his life meaningful and um and so I think that that's that's actually where his humor came from it was a kind of a psychic survival mechanism I mean I think that that's true of a lot of a lot of folks in our family yeah and it certainly is something in in researching my biography that I see time and time again and of course just to go on YouTube you get evidence like what we've just seen um time and again and I agree I think it's what's important part of what we is and I think it is as Conan O'Brien says connected in some way to suffering um I want to talk about something that we always discuss with respect to John F Kennedy and that's the degree to which he is an inspiration was an inspiration for Americans and by the way not just Americans I'm from Sweden and in that little Nordic country um in the early 1960s John F Kennedy inspired a lot of swedes I think that his death in November of 1963 was a blow my parents have talked to me about this and I think this is something you see um in so many parts of the world and I don't think by the way that it just it's certainly connected to the manner of his death and to the timing of his death but it also has something else it has something to do with what this volume brings out which is the ideas and the vision to use the subtitle of the book I want to just read um a sentence or two from the introduction and then ask ask Doug to to comment on this but this is what Stephen writes in the introduction to the book partly due to his inspirational oratorian actions the early 1960s even with its challenges still represents a high point in America's belief in its capacity for individual sacrifice one Collective Endeavor and common purpose though he was President for only a brief three years he changed the way we felt about America and are in elect an electable relationship with the rest of the world this just sounds right to me um and it's a theme that I want to try to develop in my own biography but Doug can you say something about that inspirational Dimension I think you've referenced it earlier but elaborate that yeah well um keep in mind how important that PT 109 incident is for John F Kennedy not just the fact that he almost died in the Pacific but the fact that he was able to save lives and also he was one of thus one of the heroes of democracy I mean with the whole idea of World War II is we're all in this together and John F Kennedy with his bad back with illness he should not have been serving he should have he was perfect for a desk job um to do reports because he wrote well he could a state state side but he send me send me a duty I've got to go and he worked very hard and he bounced around in places like Rhode Island to South Carolina then to Illinois and all this classes and things he took to finally get to the Pacific and after the war he felt a real kindred spirit to the young soldiers and and sailors that that not the Eisenhower patent generation but the the generation he was part of and he those so it was very formative for him and by the time he started running for congress here in Massachusetts he had already been known John Hershey had written about the pt-109 and it had created a bit of Allure and it's that heroism there that really gave the backdrop to him writing his book profiles and courage and when he saw during the Truman but particularly the Eisenhower year was this people starting to act like government couldn't do a lot that you know let's cut but fiscal conservatism and cut back spending and and um and he was able I think to to re-pick up some of FDR's new New Deal energy with the new frontier and start saying we can do it we we did it in World War II look at D-Day I mean if anybody who can do the D-Day or Mata on June 6 40 for anything's possible we're Americans and so he really collectively took the younger generation to say let's continue what maybe we call American optimism or American can-doism and I'm writing a book right now called American moonshot John F Kennedy's great Space Race and I'm seeing how he came in right after that of first hundred days I mean he had the day of pigs in the middle of it and in the spring he went to France and um you know he um and he but Gagarin went into space and then Alan Shepard and then Alan Shepard who's from New Hampshire Kennedy saw what what reminded him of the best of the best of World War II soldiers what broke God calls the greatest Generation the guys that were on the beaches and in the Pacific Theater in Europe and he said these are the new Heroes and he embraced the Mercury program and by by May of May 25th 1961 one president that long he had the nerve to go in front of a joint sense in a Congress and say we're going to put a man in the moon we're going to do it um and then we started mobilizing to do that just like we mobilized in World War II so by the time 1962 comes around and he comes to where I teach Rice University he gave a speech of a lifetime and full of a football stadium full of cheering people bringing all where and we're going to go to the Moon because it's there because Americans are about exploration and it became bipartisan the billions spent on the moonshot were Democrats Republicans Independents he pulled us all together on a common objective and out of that as you'll notice on the airport walls in Logan they'll show you Technologies it wasn't just Neil Armstrong going to the on the moon in July of 69 with Buzz Aldrin but we've got things like GPS out of it or all sorts of new types of things for pacemakers and medical equipment we've got I mean the list of of pro 1800 or something substantive new technology that emerged out of going to the moon and it becomes the I would say if somebody said what are the Great Moments of American can-doism I'd say D-Day and going to the moon and John F Kennedy was the one responsible for that second part is is it too simple Stephen to say that as we often do that you know whatever mistakes he made and he made mistakes in office we will I'm sure talk about some of those he did cause Americans to believe in something bigger than themselves um so I think so one the other thing that Doug was talking about the war experience but in 1956 President Kennedy was unable to walk basically and had the choice to have an operation that had the potential to end his life or to have to walk on crutches the rest of his life and he decided to take the risk and he almost died it took him six months to recovery got an infection he was given last rights and and during that time he wrote profiles and courage and and in profiles encourages it says of course that the stories of the past May teach they may instruct but they cannot provide courage itself without each man must look into his own soul and so what I think President Kennedy was able to do was communicate in an authentic way the capacity to have courage and like Chesterton said a great man is a man who makes others feel great and what he really did was Liberate the capacities of individuals to feel their own potential to contribute to America I think that was his great gift and that's why these speeches are so interesting because they come from a very real place and the language is crafted so beautifully that when you read them you can feel it it has a very authentic feeling and and so I wanted to get beyond the Persona of John Kennedy because of the last thing you see when you walk out of this library is that a man may die nations may rise and fall but an idea lives on and the reason that he will remain I think relevant to America is not only because yes he was a glamorous funny um you know incomparable personality but he also really thought deeply about life and he really wanted to communicate to people what was important and and Doug talked about the optimism of the of the moonshot but he also said our problems are not susceptible to easy or permanent Solutions he also said forgive your enemies but don't forget their names he was very realistic about human nature he did not say I am going to make everything great everything's going to be great it's really going to be great like he he he told people the truth he did not people and and so he he gave us the honestly the opportunities and challenges of citizenship and one of the things that I found in this book is from the last speech that he did not get to give in Dallas where he said in a world of frustrations and irritations in a world of complex problems the policies of the United States must be governed by learning and reason otherwise those who confuse the rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain popular ascendancy with their seemingly quick and easy solutions to every world problem so that's on us you know it's our choice what kind of leaders we want to choose and we're the ones that are ultimately going to be responsible for our choice I mean one of the things that you're both speaking to um which I think is one of is one is something that I think is one of John F Kennedy's most appealing characteristics attributes uh and you can guess what this is since I'm a historian but it's his historical sensibility um and maybe it's in part because um current incumbent I worry about this particular dimension of his of his personality but please because I want to say it's a President Kennedy said that art is the great Democrat liberating the energies of of not only of every sector of society we're about to defund the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities President Kennedy had the highest level of funding of Science of any American president led to the moonshot the integrated circuit that GPS solar panels and on and on we're now cutting funding for science you know religious discrimination he gave the greatest speech against religious discrimination the Civil Rights Act so everything you know this this book is not just about a historical figure like Faulkner said the past is not dead and buried it's not even passed where he conceived a Medicare and Medicaid we're still fighting that fight today so all of the things that President Kennedy stood for and and spoke about are still part of the national conversation and that and that's what I really want people to understand about this book this is a conversation about what is happening in America now in what JFK's ideas are relevant to now yeah no I think that's exactly right and I think that historical sensibility it's interesting you see it actually in him from a very early age as part of writing this biography I'm of course looking at the Young JFK I think you see it early on in particles he's sick a lot spends a lot of time in bed in those days that meant you had to read books it wasn't much else that one could do but I also think that it conditions his responses to particular policy issues I think I've dealt a lot in my previous work with Vietnam and it's it's a paradoxical Vietnam story with respect to JFK we can come back to that but it also it seems to me conditions his response to something that Doug mentioned which is the Cuban Missile Crisis I've been going through the tapes and the transcripts of the crisis and the degree to which John F Kennedy really alone in the x-com for a good portion of the crisis is insisting on the need to try to find a political solution is is bracing against the advice of virtually all members of the x-com for some kind of military action is really quite extraordinary extraordinary and I think it flows out of this this historical sensibility I want to play a tape which is from the middle of the crisis it's from October 22nd which is a Monday right smack dab in the middle of the 13 days and this is a conversation between John F Kennedy and the former president the most recent president Dwight Eisenhower [Applause] yeah this it's tough to uh as I say we will uh I don't know we may get into the invade business before many days are out but uh that's right because you you made up your mind you've got to get rid of it the only real way to get rid of course is the other things but if having you be concerned with World opinion and Berlin [Applause] well Berlin is the uh I suppose uh that may be the what they're going to try to trade off but I I I I personally I just don't quite go along you know with that dude my ideas is and Soviets will do whatever they want for their speaker is good for them yeah and I don't believe they relate one situation with another that's what they find out they can do here and then and we're we're all depending at the unit with NATO but if they go into Berlin but that means they've got to to look out to say don't get a terrific uh [Applause] what about if the Soviet Union cruise ship announces uh tomorrow which I think he will that if we attack Cuba that it's going to be nuclear war and uh what's your judgment as to the chances they'll fire these things off if we invade Cuba they will in other words you would take that risk if the situation sounds desirable if this thing is such a uh serious thing here on our plane that we're going to be uneasy and we know what this thing's happening now all right you got to use something something may uh make these people shoot them off I just don't believe this will yeah all right yeah no hang on tight sure thanks [Applause] so so I think this is really interesting because um you you see several things you see the the the the respect that I think John F Kennedy often showed toward um Elders if you will that's something that I think he showed he could he could be cutting in private as he often was even with respected white Eisenhower but you see that you see his sense of humor the chuckle at the end and you see of course Eisenhower is Hawk on this particular issue in fact I kind of wonder if that's why I'm trying to figure out why he's chuckling on this and I wonder if it's in part because on the x-com he's getting that kind of vigilant aggressive stance and now he's getting it also from from Dwight Eisenhower but I don't know the two have a response to this particular clip well I mean for one thing Kennedy own eyes and how or something I refuse to campaign for Richard Nixon his own two-term vice president to live very very end where he gave him a bit of a lackluster endorsement of Nixon but if Ike would have gone on the campaign Trail in a serious fashion for Nixon it may have been a different election in 16 number two uh Kennedy like Eisenhower part of what was called the atlanticist of that era they were about NATO first NATO foremost um I do think that chuckling is just the absurdity of it it's why we chuckle at reading Kurt Vonnegut or Dr Strangelove or I mean we're talking about nuclear weapons at our shore what else can you do when that kind of absurdy is there the humor a little bit of of laughter I think relieves the wow okay you're part of it too jeez I guess you know it's a kind of a humor as a relief mechanism I I promise I've talked to Andy card about 9 11 recently a white house chief of staff for uh right after you know for George W bush and some of the humor and afterwards just seeps in as the kind of natural way otherwise you just in a pressure cooker and you don't have um a valve to be released as for the history I mean also with this period The Guns of August book by Barbara tuckman and how important I mean to read it I mean you know that we would pray that Donald Trump would read guns of August dealing with North Korea right now and you know here's Kennedy who does but he also saw that he also saw um Winston Churchill Theodore Roosevelt there are figures in politics that were writers and also a bit of swashbuckling figures so I think he saw himself part of of that tradition I also think sorry just very quickly I also think his own experience Doug in World War II uh figures into this absolutely I think the the the the the legacy of that for him as especially as time went on and especially as we come into a nuclear age just leaves a deep Mark and I think for him the idea of great power war in the nuclear age is an impossibility not to mention an absurdity as you said before but I'm sorry Stephen so this took place if I'm not mistaken shortly after the integration of the University of Mississippi in Oxford and I found a CIA map and it showed the various regions of the United States which could be hit by the Russian missiles and so it had New York Miami all these big cities and then it said Oxford Mississippi and it's set at the bottom of the the map that the CIA put Oxford Mississippi on on the map because Robert Kennedy had requested to know whether the Russian missiles could hit Oxford Mississippi because obviously they had opposed integration I thought that was pretty funny um but so so he did have a good sense of humor but um you know one of the things that's notable I think about the Cuban Missile Crisis is it led obviously to the American University speech and the to the whole regime of arms control that we now know today so President Kennedy predicted that in 1970 there would be 20 nuclear powers in fact there are only nine and this was really the beginning of the regime of international arms control that has kept us actually from nuclear war so it's once again particularly disturbing when you see the leader of the United States urging other nations potentially to have nuclear weapons this is directly contrary obviously to this whole regime of international arms control that we've we've built you know really since the 60s which has protected us from nuclear war so I think that's that's notable and I do think it was a big um and fret I'd be interested in Doug in your thoughts on this I think it was a big Turning Point for President Kennedy that Missile Crisis in terms of how he thought about peace and his commitment to peace and and you know his whole foreign policy one of the things I think Fred's book I mean he's doing this Cutting Edge scholarship a guy named Tim nefertali has done some on the Cuban Missile Crisis but some of the Russian archives are pointing that they may have exploded a nuclear device in the sea as a sign of anger meaning maybe not go directly like Eisenhower saying I don't think they'll attack but they may have done one off the shores of Florida just to show their their might in a way you see North Korea messing around right now but I wanted to say about Fred believe it or not on the 100th birthday of John F Kennedy we still don't have the biography of Kennedy that we need of the full life and times and he's the person writing it Arthur Schlesinger was a friend and a mentor to me but Arthur was so involved with things that he wrote the brilliant thousand days which is still my favorite book on Kennedy and Ted Sorensen wrote his book on Kennedy and Bob Dalek starting a fine book and I could go on and name others but nobody's done this comprehensive life in Times of the way say David McCullough has done uh with Truman and so which with great anticipation after this 100th birthday that we look forward to his book coming out because I think it's going to hire Doug publicist well it's true we're very excited for it we're very because he goes and looks at the records and it doesn't you know it what he comes up with will be it will be historic historically um pertinent and accurate I mean the the Holdings here at the library and all of you know this uh are just unbelievable and um you know I find um that it's just endless the Amer the materials that we can use the oral history collection uh it doesn't I think get it gets lots of credit but it could get much more credit because it is just phenomenal so I I hope of course to do this the the uh the Justice I want to I just want to respond to Stephen I think and then we're going to play a short clip from the American University speech I I do think Stephen that it is a turning point um I also think however that it's not as much of a turning point as we sometimes say what do I mean well Stephen and Doug's book this very book when you read it you will see that in fact in several of the speeches before the missile crisis you see the themes that he articulates in the American University speech not maybe with quite the same eloquence not with the same urgency or maybe um quite the same kind of conviction but they're there there's a speech for example in Seattle in November of 1961 so this is a year before 11 months before the missile crisis in which he issues what he calls a plea for negotiations in which he says there's not an American solution to every world problem we comprising at that point six percent of the world's population can't dictate to the other 94 percent how they should live their Affairs uh the inaugural the inauguralists I may have suggested earlier is a more complex nuanced intensely powerful address in my view than a mere kind of cold war aggressive speech that we sometimes think of it as nevertheless this speech coming after this extraordinary moment the Missile Crisis I think Stephen's right it is a turning point for him and bear in mind that it's two speeches in consecutive days one on civil rights one on the American University speech an extraordinary short period of time can we play we have a short clip from the speech please in short both the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in holding the arms race agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours and even the most hostile Nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations and only those treaty obligations which are in their own interest so let us not be blind to our differences but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved and if we cannot and now our differences at least we can help make the world safe for diversity for in the final analysis our most basic common links heirs that we all inhabit this small planet we all breathe the same air we all cherish our children's futures and we are all mortal so if I'm not mistaken David Kennedy the Great Stanford historian who I don't believe is a relation has the essay on this remarkable speech in the book in a fine essay quick word on yeah so actually President Obama wrote an essay on this um but was not able to contribute it due to ethics counsel telling him that he couldn't do it while he was a sitting president that was in the days when we had ethics um and then you see it somewhere else uh well actually he kind of turned it into the speech that he gave at Hiroshima when he went to visit Caroline so he used a lot of the material that he was going to use and that was really inspired by President Kennedy's um American University speech so we're sorry that we couldn't get him in the book but we did get President Carter um so we we have an American one American president in there that's pretty good the thing of that that speech at American University or tomorrow Cuban Missile Crisis is how much John F Kennedy wanted to heal the Riff with the Soviet Union and you heard it that's why you all clapped everything we all share the same air and he started a secret correspondence with Khrushchev trying to make the world a safer place they he started really looking at can we share and do space together I mean we always come up the moon race we're going to beat them but he was willing to consider could we do it as a joint effort um so he was often trying to heal the Cold War not pour gasoline on it I think that gets lost sometimes in who John F Kennedy was particularly the year be after the Cuban Missile Crisis yeah I guess you know we won't we can't know it's a counter factual question we can't know what would have happened had he lived but it is interesting to me that shortly before his death he had a speaking tour of the mountain the Mountain West States and he tried out some of these themes that that Doug talked about and it's interesting to see the response to those speeches because it has resonated in what is a fairly was and is a fairly conservative part of the country when he you know elaborated the themes that we just heard in this clip um so it is a it's a tantalizing what if um in terms of the Cold War and we're going to move fairly soon to some questions from all of you uh and as we prepare to do that a couple of questions from you and then I'll give some instructions for this in terms of the New Media landscape that we're now in could one of one or both of you speculate a little bit about how you think John F Kennedy would have fared or would be faring in this in this very different lady media landscape we'll both take it on um briefly but I'm in that world a little bit with CNN and all of that I think he would have fared quite well I think um he was incredibly fast on his feet he pioneered as you saw in some of the clips the press conference nobody since or before has done better he was charismatic on the campaign Trail tell a j defined what is telegenic his background in history and literature and how much he read he ever since childhood he devoured newspapers and the like would have made him very quick on his feet and we saw that he won the debates with uh with Nixon um and I think he could have continued to have won debates the uh the only caveat to that would be some of the things in his personal life and how those would have a flashlight shined on those could have survived a new kind of glare now where everything inside somebody's personal life gets uh coughed up to the very top of the national dialogue so he may have had to have behavioral changes or have had to have um you know worked his way through them finding other ways to address those types of issues that they came up but I think he's a star still a star in the 21st century a political star now that's why we're all gravitate to him we just want more see Kennedy like bring them on we need more I'm a fellow at the connection science group at MIT which studies data science and uh and we're looking at media as one of the things we're looking at but I think there are there is a new media landscape which um you know there's not a fundamental factual predicate that everyone can agree on and I think back in President Kennedy's day there was there was a kind of a consensus among the media and there were leading figures like John Chancellor and Walter Cronkite and these people who were trained you know professional journalists who who treated facts uh seriously and I think you know we've we've lost that kind of consensus um secondly I would say that the development of social media has not contributed positively in most ways the Democratic discourse it's balkanized people and particularly now with very sophisticated psychological micro targeting people will get fed messages that reinforce their previously existing beliefs so I think that that would be a challenge but I do mostly agree with Doug the last thing that I would like to say which we haven't touched on is of course President Kennedy made a tax cut while he was President he cut taxes at the highest marginal tax rate above four hundred and forty thousand dollars from 91 percent to 67 percent during his time the average CEO was making around I think nine times what the average worker is now it's 300 times what the average worker is and we have the highest levels of wealth inequality that we have seen since the Great Depression and one of the things that he was concerned about in addition to peace was poverty and we've made a lot of strides on poverty but he was kind of planning what later became Johnson's war on poverty you know as part of his 64 campaign effort so that's another issue um and there's an there's a couple of essays about that in the book by Elizabeth Warren and Ron suskind on on the way that he faced down corporate power while he was president but that's clearly an area where you know we're still facing some challenges I suppose you could argue that in this respect he succeeded in a way that Barack Obama did not that is to say he proved more able in his short Administration to keep the so-called lunge pale Democrats uh in the within the tent within the party you know you know and and President Obama maybe struggled a bit more with this yeah but he also is able to win States Kennedy like Texas you know which are now so red I mean the whole civil rights you know many Republic African-Americans vote in Eisenhower um and they've forgotten them that still was the GOP uh the party of Lincoln many in 1960 African-Americans were stayed by Nixon wrote a daddy King Martin Luther King's father was a Eisenhower Republican so the things changed so much after that Civil Rights Acts or sign in 64 and 65 but the the um but Democrats could easily want one Southern States during Kennedy's time it was a strong belt of white Southerners voting Kennedy having Johnson on the ticket probably one one last thing so I think there's a big thing that the Democratic party could learn from JFK and that is to emphasize this notion of civic identity above all forms of other identity whether they be racial or anything else and I think what we have in the country right now is a kind of tribalism of the right and the left you have an anti-immigrant nationalist tribalism on the right and you have the Democratic party emphasizing group rights which we may be in favor of but as a primary message I think doesn't reach a lot of the country and so I think that you know one of the things that I learned from watching my uncles Robert F Kennedy like Barack Obama was able to get black and white votes by virtue of making this kind of universal appeal and I'm worried that the Democratic party is going to fall back into this type of um you know sectarian politics that I don't think is ultimately going to be successful so I'm going to ask one question final question of our of our panelists as I do I would suggest if this is a good idea for those of you who have a question to make your way to either this mic here or this mic here and as you do uh let me pose this question for the two of you um it has to do with presidential greatness I guess um how do we Define it does John F Kennedy meet that definition I was on a radio show this week on WBUR with Richard Reeves uh Richard Reeves wrote what I think is a very good book on the Kennedy presidency almost the kind of day by day he took a particular approach which was to look at what a president in this case John F Kennedy experiences day by day and I think it works very well it's it's a very important book and Richard Reeves you know I think is conscious of missteps by John F Kennedy he didn't get everything right he made mistakes um I think he's probably ambivalent in his own mind about whether Kennedy meets that greatness threshold sometimes it's said that you know you have to oversee a war to be considered a great American president and perhaps you have to be in office longer than a thousand days but um Richard Reeve said this in that show he said you know Kennedy brought out the best in the American people that's a powerful summation uh notwithstanding the ambivalence that I think maybe he feels but I'm curious um great president or what do you think oh I think without a doubting he's a great president I don't even question it um his in his his story and lives on you know I read recently John Steinbeck's letters to Jackie Kennedy after his death and he tried to explain to Jackie Kennedy that what heroes are in history and how heroes are necessary and he was heroic figure I mean any young person today including a nephew of mine who wants to join the Peace Corps and go serve and put out fourth American values and help people in the world as a foot soldier of John F Kennedy people that are going into NASA and space exploration and in The Sciences or or of our foot soldiers of John F Kennedy people that believe the Arts and Poets and writers have a role in government Kennedy broke them all and not just Robert Frost but Carl Sandberg and Wallace stegner and on and on connecting to the Arts people that believe in Enviro mentalism he gave he embraced in the same way Theodore Roosevelt embraced Upton Sinclair's the jungle to clean up factories he embraced Silent Spring by Rachel Carson saying that public health mattered and he challenged Dao in American cyanide another of chemical companies and saying we are not going to be allowed to pollute the planet like that anymore when we live in a world where you don't have nuclear testing going on or and it's it's a it's a you know where we're just not willy-nilly blowing up bombs in Nevada and New Mexico and having Fallout from Downwinders that get sick from it all that's Testament to John F Kennedy and we can have Barack Obama as President as John Lewis says in the book it was when Kennedy addressed the Nation about civil rights that was the big turn um the beginning of of the of the federal government embracing Dr King's um mission in in such a concrete and moving ways so I could go on and on but I think that Kennedy um while not a top three president not Lincoln Washington or FDR but he's in that top group of presidents I think he's somebody who's was significant in his legacy is going to continue to live so the fact that I'm unqualified to assess performance of my own relatives will not stop me from answering the question I would say that my mother would kill me if I didn't say yes but I'm going to leave that to the professional historians on the panel I'm just here for a show what do you think Fred I'm seriously no I think that um I think Doug has put it quite well I think that you know we can speak about the top three and given what they had to do and given the length of time that they had to do it and the given the obstacles that they faced it's an extraordinary Trio but I'm comfortable agreeing with Doug that in that second High tier is where I would put our 35th president and and you know the the book that I'm writing um will consider all of this and consider the mistakes I think that as I suggested earlier Vietnam Vietnam is a is a difficult story because on the one hand I think that John F Kennedy always had doubts I opened my last book with his trip to Indochina with Bobby and Patricia JFK you know is 34. he's a young man he's a this is 1951 he's going to run for the Senate I think he understands even then anybody including the French in that case but also by extension Americans who try to win a military Victory against Ho Chi minh's Revolution um it's destined to fail and I think he still has those doubts all the way through to his trip to Dallas in 1963. but here's the Paradox that same Kennedy expands American involvement substantially in in Vietnam during his presidency 1962 is a very important year and so when he takes that fateful trip to Dallas he has expanded the U.S involvement he is deep in the American commitment and thereby made things much more difficult for his successor I still have a thought or two on the on the what if which we can discuss but but but no I think that Doug has summarized the importance of this President and his importance for us today both of you have very well let's go to questions we're going to start over here I would ask you that you keep questions brief that allows us for more for more conversation yes sir President Kennedy was President for a relatively short time and yet it seems he delivered more speeches or maybe I should say more memorable speeches in that length of time uh during that time Ted Sorensen was his speech writer and I was wondering if you could comment upon what their relationship was with a friendly was it strictly professional uh did the president edit much of what Sorensen did or did the president start off by telling Sorensen this is the message I want to deliver Ted do your job thank you very much I can speak on a personal level and then maybe you guys can speak on that um I would say that Ted Sorensen was a very close friend of the family he had enormous respect I would say even love for President Kennedy if you look at the introduction of my book he very humbly gives JFK credit for the speeches um and I think everyone acknowledges that he had a significant contribution you know to President Kennedy's oratory and from what I understand from looking at the documents it was very much of a process of a back and forth between Sorensen and Kennedy and the ideas came from Kennedy and Sorensen when fashion a draft and Kennedy would critique it and sometimes extemporaneously expand on it as he gave it so it was a it was a beautiful coming together of two Brilliant Minds um and and I think that's that's what I would say I would just I agree I would add a couple things you know I want to plug another book there's a new book by Tom Oliphant and Curtis Wilkie on the 1960 campaign it's called the road to Camelot show is that Sorensen and Kennedy often just the two of them try to imagine this barnstorming the country in a small airplane in 1957. Kennedy gave I think more than 140 speeches that year because he's already running quietly for the presidency by the way that's a secret they show to his ultimate victory in terms of the nomination and then by extension the presidency instead he's just he's willing to work harder and start earlier and it's Sorensen who is with him often as I say it's just the two of them and they remain as Stephen says this this extraordinary working partnership I would also say however that we know and this is from evidence right here at the library John F Kennedy quite often departed from speeches you can see long stretches of speeches that are basically extemporaneous and still delivered in full paragraphs um so so Sorensen is important yeah that's right Sorensen is hugely important but as Steven says it is very much a partnership all the way through right here um well in case you forgot president Trump also said in his inaugural address uh that we will no longer seek to impose our way of life on other nations and it was far less interventionist than Hillary Clinton but there's another disturbing parallel between today in 1960 during the 60 campaign Kennedy uh tried to exploit a bogus missile so-called missile gap between the United States and the Soviet Union claiming that the Soviet Union had uncounted Untold numbers of icbms after the election a couple of months later his secretary of defense McNamara claimed that there was no missile Gap and by the end of the year it was clear that the United States actually enjoyed an advantage today the Democrats was helping some Republicans are trying to whip up a new Cold War hysteria against Russia so I think we need to avoid don't we getting into this trap where we believe this alarm is rhetoric coming for political purposes mainly directed at Russia or the Soviet Union whatever you want to call them or other potential adversaries fear is a big motivator in elections in keeping the population afterwards and if we didn't learn that lesson with the missile Gap then we should today because this hysteria that's been developing again has to be equated with that in some sense doesn't it yeah I'll grab that one um if you don't um the um once Sputnik went up in 1957 it was a giant event in the United States wanted to get caught up on rocketry we had brought over all the Nazi rocket scientists we put them at Fort Bliss in El Paso Texas including Von Braun is the most famous and then we moved them to Huntsville Alabama which is still known as Rocket City USA and then we opened up took over a naval base in Florida Cape Canaveral that you all know what people forget is in 1958 when we were started doing our Vanguard rocket program so here's sputniks going up and Eisenhower doesn't seem to be too worried about it or because it's you know let's keep it down it's not that big a deal he wasn't fully bought into space Vanguard would go up and just collapse and topple on the tarmac so we were getting hammered losing on the the space edge so much so that Lyndon Johnson as in the Senate has to create NASA's so we get Ike to agree to create NASA so but you cut to 1960 Kennedy was on the idea that it's not just missile Gap but missiles satellite technology um a Weaponry that we we were losing our Edge vis-a-vis the Soviet Union because they were doing successful satellites in space and we weren't that message worked for him in 1960 on the missile Gap it gave him a differentiate between the Eisenhower Nixon years so by 1961 Kennedy had already studied quite a bit about the space program it was able to embrace that Obama after they put as I mentioned before Gagarin up first and then we and Alan Shepard and then Kennedy kept using the word LeapFrog we got a leapfrog we got to do something bigger and that's when the moon came into focus and Von Braun and the rocket scientist had the plan on how to get there and and the rest is um you know the Apollo and Gemini Mercury you know the Apollo and Gemini programs yeah I would I would just add that um it's quite true that the missile Gap was exploited by the campaign um soon soon enough uh John F Kennedy and his advisors understood that in fact there was no Gap and to the extent that there was a gap it actually was in favor of the United States and the camp you know this is this is a campaign both for the nomination and then again Nixon against Nixon that was certainly very capable of being ruthless and engaging in um in threat inflation this is something that in terms of my work on the Cold War we see from Republican administrations from an early point and Democratic Administrations Savvy politicians come to realize that they benefit personally in terms of their political fortunes if they inflate threats and I don't mean for a moment to suggest that the Kennedy administration or the in this case the Kennedy campaign wasn't um willing to engage uh in that soon enough however they learned and I think that the administration once it came in was more responsible on this issue than perhaps they suggested in the campaign itself yeah in my grandfather's house in the Cape there's a V2 rocket that landed on his lawn during the war that set had the initials jpk on it it was a fire bomb that didn't go off and that was probably designed possibly by the same people who helped with the U.S space program that's how ironic history is right here sir yes my question is about a speech that Kennedy I think it's too often overlooked his speech accepting the Liberal Party nomination which he lays out what he calls my political Credo and um my question was through all of his speeches he has a sense of national purpose civic duty and I feel like my my friends we feel that too often these days politicians kind of play at their side and they talk about um where the country is not where they want to take it so if Kennedy was alive today what would he have to say about liberalism the Democratic party what would his critique be about her current politics can you speak to that yeah I wish I had a copy of the book can I get it because I'd like to read a line from that speech actually if I can do it um well I just think can you open it up to the liberalism speech um I think what I said which is that um he had this pervasive sense of wanting to unify the country and frame his appeal in Universal human terms and I see I think you see that in the Civil Rights address I think you see it in the American University it written dress and I think that you see it in his definition of a liberal speech which is the speech you're referring to which is actually a phenomenal speech one of his best speeches and this gets I think to the the notion that I was talking about that I think successful Democratic politicians like Franklin Roosevelt like Barack Obama like Robert Kennedy like John Kennedy have always framed their appeal in those kind of universal terms and so I think that um you know that that's what I think what do you think Doug well I just I think Barack Obama was here for the profiles and courage talked about what John F Kennedy meant to him and that's the kind of politician that I think President Kennedy would have loved somebody who fought for America's ideals somebody who ran such an efficient Administration I think when we pull away and look at the great Democratic leaders of recent times it's Obama and John F Kennedy so I just want to read this he says I believe um I believe this faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as a people lies at the heart of the liberal faith for liberalism is not so much a party Creed or a set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart faith in man's ability through through the experience of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and Brotherhood which all human life deserves who can really argue with that I mean that's what liberalism is it's the things that we do together it's the possibility that we believe in for making our society better and I think that's the way President Kennedy articulated liberalism in the way that the Democratic party should do so if you will human be I very vividly recall the 60s I'd like to make a few comments on what somebody said question quickly though please all right I I did have some things to ask but uh I'll just ask this thank you uh first of all like I've often wondered uh about the professor prickly if he was related to David Brickley you have a question is why are we in Afghanistan and how would John Kennedy deal with that today talk about that Algeria speech and I you know the the the Afghanistan intervention obviously has to be considered in in light of 9 11. and the the actions immediately thereafter by the Bush Administration and then by a uh a feeling on the part of successive Administrations that maybe maybe you could pull this thing out somehow uh Barack Obama of course expanded to a modest degree American involvement in the fall of 2009 an important attempt it seems to me in in part I think to live up to promises he had made in the campaign where he said that Iraq is the in 2008 Iraq is the bad War Afghanistan is the good war and then I think he boxed himself in uh took the course that he did in 2009 now I understand the Trump Administration may be uh considering uh deepening U.S involvement once again in the conflict um I think that you know the what I can say about John F Kennedy in this regard is that he he was conscious of the difficulties as I suggested earlier of uh military Solutions in what we might call the developing world and I think he would have been conscious of the difficulties in Afghanistan I think he would have certainly been leery of committing ground troops to that particular part of the world and I think as as Doug suggests his speech in Algeria in 1957 and by the way there were other speeches in the late 1950s that that underscore his understanding as he put it I think in that speech that the key in the world the most important attribute in the world is not communism or capitalism it's man's Eternal desire to be free I think that would have conditioned at least I'd like to think that would have conditioned how he would have responded to a difficult difficult problem like the one in in Afghanistan that's the best I can offer sir first privilege to be in the same room with a Kennedy and Mr Brinkley I'm a great admirer of yours and this Presidential Museum is doing fantastic I'm a frequent visitor could you Mr Kennedy Mr Brinkley and the moderator elaborate on how could the Legacy and spirit of President Kennedy speak to and work to improve upon specific areas such as church and state relations referenced the the speech that the president had made President Kennedy had made that he was he just happens to be running for president who was a Catholic if you could speak to that how it transcends today also to a greater you know desire of for community service for our young people as well as foreign policy but I'm specifically concerned if you would speak to how his legacy can Inspire speak to church State and immigration if you please and thank you well um in between the um civil rights speech and the American University speech President Kennedy gave a small little noticed talk to the Italian-American Society where he proposed new immigration standards for the United States and he said that our immigration policy should be fair it should be generous and with such a policy we can look to the future with Clean Hands and a clear conscience and so that really led to the 1965 Immigration Act which made America a younger and more diverse country so I think that speaks directly to to today in a very specific way which is not to say that he wouldn't favor um you know the enforcement of immigration law I think he would favor that um with respect to um I'd like to speak to the issue of community service because the Institute of politics at the Kennedy School brought together 30 universities including West Point Texas conservative liberal and 65 percent of Millennials favor a national community service program the distinguishing feature of President Kennedy's generation was that 19 million men went to war together and it was a transformative experience for all of them President Kennedy served with people from all different stations in life it changed him as a person I know that from my mother and today we don't have any common Endeavor we don't have anything that we all do together and I think the single most useful thing we can do for America for about 20 billion dollars which is half or less than half of what is proposed for the current yearly increase in the defense budget we could pay College tuition for every Young American who wanted to serve their country tree I think that would be the best investment we can make I would just add that the book on the issue of church State I don't know whether Stephen and Doug would agree but on the issue of church State relations and on the speech in Houston uh during the campaign I think you would give particular attention to this one might even say that this is a uh almost a kind of focus of a certain part of the book suggesting that you see it's important yeah absolutely so and uh the um you know I I I I really never ever do what somebody would have done you know because it's so hard to know what John F Kennedy would do but I I pretty compensate John F Kennedy would never have made Muslim Americans feel second rate the way Donald Trump did and I thought it was a cruel injection of of um demonizing a particular religious group in the last election cycle so we we asked the Dalai Lama and Rick Warren who's a an Evangelical leader and Tariq Ramadan who teaches Islam at Oxford University and who was banned from the United States under the Bush Administration to comment on that speech and I hope that you'll read their commentary because they all speak out very eloquently in agreement with President Kennedy right here sir this question doesn't come from me it's actually coming from the Hyannis Museum down on the cape um the person asks how do you think learning and reading about JFK through his speeches rather than just through lectures influences readers well I'd like to it's not just speeches but anytime you can get the words of a per you know it's like reading Abraham Lincoln or Theodore Roosevelt John F Kennedy puts so much effort in the speeches because it mattered to him he thought oratory was a way to move people um and you saw that when he started out with this inaugural address and you follow these remarkable set of speeches honestly you have to go back I mean FDR had great speeches but they weren't these compositions of of um intellectual and Civic engagement the way that Kennedy did so if you want to recapture that era I think the speeches are are just a remarkable way to do it Barack Obama was very good at that someday a book like this could be done on Barack Obama's speeches um and because some we we haven't yet caught up just how great some of those are so we have six of the nation's great historians in this book and including David and McCullough Michael bash lost Ted Widmer David Kennedy from Stanford but Doug is very modestly neglected to mention that he wrote a very moving and original history of JFK's life which kind of ties this all together and we also have 500 photos from these greatest photographers of that era that was the Mount Olympus of American documentary photography Cornell capital and read them all shock low Burton borinsky these are the Rolling Stones and the Beatles of American documentary photography so the whole experience kind of gives you very vividly a feeling what it was like to be there and you know what what JFK was talking about what was happening in his life and what was happening in the country yeah and I think also the speeches are just a great teaching tool as I think about this with respect to students um because what you can do is you can have the students not just read the speeches but they can in many cases see them see John F Kennedy deliver them and because of how well they're written and this is substantially Sorenson but not exclusively Sorenson um you can also teach a great deal about writing and about how to express yourself effectively but it's especially as Doug and Stephen are saying the content of the speeches that I think make them great in the classroom and again as I suggested earlier I think it was a it was a a stroke of Genius by Stephen in this to to frame the book in this term around in these terms around the speeches sir thank you for this evening um I I think President Kennedy's said to Arthur Schlesinger I'm an idealist without illusions and I'm just wondering for each one of you as people who know a lot about his life how you see those sort of qualities idealism on the one hand uh pragmatism or whatever you want to call without illusions on the other how you see those things operating in JFK and particularly in terms of charting is development from 1961 to 1963. I'll just answer briefly first I said suggested not too long ago I used the phrase principled pragmatism to refer to Barack Obama this was a an interview about foreign policy but I kind of like the phrase with respect to Obama and I like it also with respect to JFK I think that I think that what you've just described does to for me summarize his approach to foreign affairs I think there is a kind of realism there in terms of how he approaches pressing international issues um it's one reason why I'm sympathetic in many respects to his foreign policy but it's principled there's a principled pragmatism and we've discussed it to some extent this evening in terms of the vision that underlies that foreign policy and I think that's the trick for any president including our current president to it seems to me to on the one hand take the world as it is respond to a certain ad hocism it seems to me often can make sense but to do so in a way that still conforms uh to American institutions and to the principles on this upon which this country was built I think he did it by and large with respect to foreign policy so um my Aunt Jackie said that she was attracted to President Kennedy because he had imagination and that was a difficult thing to find in a man and um you know Robert Kennedy used to say that the man's reached or quote from browning that a man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for so I think this idea of the aspirational quality of human life right the fact that we are all flawed including President Kennedy obviously but that we continue to reach for something beyond what we think we're capable of that is the tension that I think John F Kennedy managed to express so beautifully um and there's a Harvard philosopher Josiah Royce who says ours is in the trying you know and I think that he was able to make other people feel that they should do that and and so I think idealism that Illusions is just a brilliant way of capturing that thank you let's let's do this let's take these last two questions since we're almost out of time together starting with you sir and then we'll wrap up okay thank you could you speak to how President Kennedy was able to Rally the country um to go to the moon and do you think we'll ever see another president that will be able to get the vast majority of the people to get behind a project so big that is right across the plate for Doug but he's I'm going to have him hold he's working on this very thing yes ma'am I'd like to thank you all for the such thing and um just with the state that the country is in now and I know I was a young child when I watched the inauguration when President Kennedy asked us what we can do for our country I know a lot of people are calling the representatives and getting involved in all kinds of matches the ideals that John F Kennedy believed in such as education science climate and the list goes on and on I just was wondering if you can help the people in this room and all of us really what can we do besides what we're trying to do now by writing and joining groups and do you see a practical thing um that we can do to help our country continue on the same ideals and we don't lose a lot of the ideas that John F Kennedy in spite in all of us thank you thanks very much you want a brief combo of both and then we'll end with Stephen uh as for the the moonshot John F Kennedy did it by embracing the NASA and prioritizing it by fighting for a budget by demanding that we do it by breaking being part of ticker tape parades for Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom and and John Glenn for putting putting it not uh put putting in an America's highest ideals of exploration connecting it to things like Columbus and Magellan and the the core of discovery of Lewis and Clark that we needed to you know to explore space he felt the same way and suddenly about the ocean it just doesn't get talked about as much as ocean exploration um as for what we can and so you know Joe Biden is calling his fight to cure cancer the moonshot the new moonshot everybody's looking for something that we can all pull together I think Biden's on is something uh with that with his cancer Crusade but what we all can do I think Stephen nailed it I am deeply concerned about not allowing young people to have a sense of what public service is and how do we give an opportunity for young people to do a climate Conservation Corps to go you know plant trees and and work at National Parks or or to work in urban centers or work in soup kitchens and how can we get a new generation engaged with what it means to be American in the best sense which which is not just about taking for myself and my success but how do we build a larger and better community and I think that their seeds are there in the Peace Corps and in what Kennedy called a youth conservation or he was trying to establish and Stephen touched on it in the ways that you can get college students to have these years or or you can spend two years doing public service and get rewarded for that because it isn't just all the good work we'll all get I mean look at the New Deal of FDR Public Works programs that are amazing but it teaches one how to work together and it teaches one about putting what it means to be an American which is giving back to fellow Americans um yeah I totally agree with Doug in addition to that I would say that um there was one thing that Donald Trump or more maybe more than one thing but one thing that Donald Trump I think was relatively right about which is that the political system is corrupt and it's infected by money and I think one of the things we have to do is fix that and so I've joined the board of this group called represent us and they're trying to pass the American anti-corruption act and it consists of basically four things one you cannot take donations from an industry which you regulate if you are a politician corruption is legal in America right now number number one number two you cannot be a lobbyist for five years after you leave government number three nonpartisan redistricting of legislative districts the problem is that all the districts are gerrymandered so the middle of the country is not represented and number four campaign Financial form you need to raise 20 million dollars to run for a senate seat in this country like it's no wonder that we don't have a crop of new Young politicians who how many people can raise 20 million dollars so I think if we fix that then the rest of the system is going to work better um and and so that's that's another thing that I'm interested in we've come to the end I want to close by reading a very short passage and then I'm going to ask you to join me in thanking our panel but this is a passage that Steph Stephen referenced earlier this is from a speech that John F Kennedy did not get a chance to give it was slated for the Dallas trademark just an hour or so after he was assassinated but this was a passage that Stephen Drew to my attention I think you'll agree that it has contemporary resonance as we close in a world of complex and continuing problems in a world full of frustrations and irritations America's leadership must be guided by learning and reason or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain popular ascendancy and with their swimmingly Swift and simple solution solutions to every world problem today voices are heard in the land preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality we cannot hope that everyone will talk sense to the American people but we can hope that fewer people will listen to this nonsense that's [Applause] we want to thank you for for coming tonight um and remind you that there's a book signing um happening imminently with these two gentlemen uh please join me in thanking them this evening [Laughter]

Channel: JFK Library

Views: 18,838

Keywords: John, F., Kennedy, Presidential, Library, and, Musuem

Id: Z7seuq7pD48

Length: 93min 34sec (5614 seconds)

Published: Mon May 15 2017