Let the word go forth

The election was tough, and close. Republicans wondered aloud and often if their opponent was appropriate and a legitimate candidate to lead the country. The Democrat, a young, charismatic and handsome Senator, was forced to give a speech during the campaign explaining why people needn't be afraid, and how about if we concentrate on the issues instead of window dressing? The Republican candidate was a polarizing, love 'em or hate 'em political veteran.

2008? No. 1960. The Republican nominee was Richard Nixon, and the winning Democrat was John Kennedy. The fear was that as the country's first elected Catholic chief executive, he'd take his orders from the Pope. While that seems vaguely ludicrous now, at the time Republicans were terrified, and fomented vicious rumors throughout the campaign that Kennedy was some kind of Trojan Horse.

January 20, 1961 was a bitterly cold, bright day, exactly 50 years ago today. Washington was still digging out from a heavy snowfall the night before. Former Poet Laureate Robert Frost intended to read a poem he had composed for the occasion, but the sun's glare was so bright on the Capitol's east front portico that Frost couldn't read the pages in front of him, so he recited "The Gift Outright" from memory.

As Kennedy rose to speak for the first time as President, the world held its breath, having no idea what to expect from the son of Ambassador Joseph Kennedy. What the country and the world heard that day was one of the great inaugural addresses in presidential history. Forty eight years later, President Barack Obama used JFK's inaugural as a template for his own.

Kennedy showed cold war defiance,

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. "

He reminded his audience that he wasn't part of the same generation as his predecessors.

"Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world."

Kennedy signaled a firm endorsement of diplomacy (which would prove helpful during the Cuban Missile Crisis to come in less than two years)

So let us begin anew—remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

Finally, in the passage that everyone remembers a half century later, the new president gave rhetorical birth to the Peace Corps and a new national ethic of service that still resonates today:

The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Since Kennedy, we've had other great communicators - Reagan, Clinton and Obama come to mind, but none of them lit the same flame of optimism and belief that, for the first time in a long time, anything was possible. Kennedy's speech laid the foundation for his upcoming grand challenge to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. When Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas one thousand days after he took office, the country wondered what could have been. What might have happened in a second term? We'll never know, but we do know how great John Kennedy's first speech was as President of the United States. Fifty years later, it's worth watching in its entirety.
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Photo credit: americanrhetoric.com