I finally got around to picking up the late Ted Sorensen’s (2008) memoir, “Counselor.” You don’t have to be a John F. Kennedy fan–or phile–to find it a rewarding read. Sorensen, JFK’s key Congressional aide, soaring-rhetoric speech writer and influential presidential adviser who died last October, was also a hero-worshiping loyalist. So, no, “Counselor” is not some kiss-and-tell expose of JFK’s dark-side dalliances. (There is criticism, however, ranging from JFK showing “no courage” when it came to not disassociating himself from Communist-baiting–but family friend–Sen. Joe McCarthy to turning a “deaf ear” on China.) But as one who was a ghostwriter-like collaborator on JFK books and a trusted sounding board on domestic and foreign policies–from the Soviet Union to civil rights–Sorensen mattered mightily back in the day.
His role in drafting the deft, nuanced written response to Nikita Khrushchev helped save geopolitical face and, arguably, the world during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was that important, but never self-important. And given that he seemed so quintessential un-Kennedy–a nerdy, tea-totaling, party-disdaining Nebraska Unitarian–he had to be good at what he did.
“Counselor” is also an aching, nostalgic forum for what might have been. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Missile Crisis, Berlin and civil rights crucibles, there would have followed a successful second term, reflects Sorensen. The “Great Society,” in effect, as an extension of the “New Frontier.” Sorensen underscores Kennedy’s right-to-left evolution along the political continuum.
“He would have brought a more heavily Democratic Congress in with him,” states Sorensen, “laying the foundation for strong legislative accomplishment. … The Medicare program he had favored as far back as 1960 would have been enacted in 1965, as would his tax reduction and civil rights legislation. Anti-poverty legislation would have been pushed through.”
Vietnam, according to Sorensen, was agonizing and temporizing for Kennedy, who didn’t want to appear soft on Communism to the point that he might be greasing the skids for a Barry Goldwater presidency. And yet he resisted advice–from Vice President Lyndon Johnson to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Maxwell Taylor to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara–that he at least start inserting combat troops.
“He was determined not to precipitate a general land war in Asia,” states Sorensen.
“Counselor” is also an intriguing look inside America’s ultimate communications and speech-writing inner sanctum. Anyone enamored with words can identify. Anyone who has ever given–or written–a speech can identify. Anyone who has ever been an important decision-maker–or advised one–can identify. Occasionally a dry Sorensen wit seeps through.
Some Sorensen outtakes on wordsmithing and collaboration with JFK:
* “The best presidential speechwriter in American history was Abraham Lincoln, who wrote his own.”
* “Avoid cliches like the plague…Try not to ever split an infinitive…Make sure that every pronoun agrees with their antecedent, and I’ve told you a million times, don’t exaggerate!”
* “Alliteration and repetition can help make a speech memorable–as can the ‘reversible raincoat,’ another technique occasionally used by JFK and me, but often parodied. Academic analysts called this chiasmus, a new word for me, but an ancient literary device. ‘Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.’ … ‘Bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.”
* “As a speechwriter, I felt that words that roughly rhymed were more easily remembered and more clearly communicated”: ‘Let every nation know … that we shall oppose any foe.’ In each case, the test is not to ask how it reads but to ask how it sounds.”
* “I have always found the gospel of Paul appealing, but I find the gospel of Peale appalling.”–Sorensen’s response to comments made by the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale warning against the election of a Catholic president.
* “And so, my fellow Democrats: ask not what your party can give to you–ask what you can give to your party. Let us never contribute to our own decline; but let us never decline a contribution.”–Part of Sorensen’s Inaugural speech parody that JFK gave at a Democratic National Committee fund-raising dinner. JFK thought it hilarious. Robert Kennedy thought it inappropriate to parody that which had already attained “sacrosanct” status in American culture.
* “Is the author the person who did much of the research and helped choose the words in many of its sentences, or is the author the person who decided the substance, structure and theme of the book; read and revised each draft; inspired, constructed, and improved the work? Like JFK’s speeches, ‘Profiles in Courage’ was a collaboration … But to answer the speculation of my would-be defenders, I never felt–not for a moment–that I was wrongfully denied part of the credit, much less a share in the Pulitzer Prize.”
* “I do not dismiss the potential of the right speech on the right topic delivered by the right speaker in the right way at the right moment. It can ignite a fire, change men’s minds, open their eyes, alter their votes, bring hope to their lives, and, in all these ways, change the world. I know. I saw it happen.”
Press Conference Prep
As is well known, Sorensen also worked with and for Robert F. Kennedy. This included helping RFK prepare for a critical press conference after announcing his intention to run for president in 1968.
Permit me a modest inclusion here. In a previous incarnation, I was media relations manager at USF and was involved in prepping President Frank Borkowski for an important press briefing on his acceptance of the presidency at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C.
It seemed everyone at the mock news conference in the president’s office was respectfully dancing around the red-meat-media issue when I posed this question (prefaced with the faux-polite reporter artifice: “with all due respect”).
“Why, sir, would you leave a major research university in a major metropolitan market to take a similar position in a 12,000-enrollment institution in Boone, N.C.? Are you, with all due respect, sir, pre-empting, in effect, your firing and is this convenient cover from the wrath of (Florida Chancellor of the State University System) Charlie Reed?”
Ouch. But better to hear it as friendly-fire target practice than to be blind-sided by a scorched-earth media and risking one of those deer-in-the-headlights moments.
Anyway, Dr. Borkowski, a classy guy who deserved to be well served, survived that crucible by playing up the positives of bucolic beauty, proximity to some family members and relative intimacy afforded by a much smaller enrollment. And here’s what Sorensen peppered RFK with to prepare him for an inevitably adversarial media dynamic.
*”What accomplishments do you claim? Does that include wiretapping Martin Luther King?”
*”How do you explain your association with Sen. Joe McCarthy?
*”What is your position on population control in the Third World, in view of your own 11 children?
*”Why did you not run for president until (Gene) McCarthy in New Hampshire cleared the way?”
Ouch.