Ask Not

Speech By: John F. Kennedy

Date: January 20 1961

Location: U.S. Capitol

Occasion: Inaugural Address

Analysis:

We view this speech today through the long lense of half a century. That long perspective has done nothing to diminish its power.

Despite the pomp, ceremony, and celebration attendant with a Presidential inauguration, few inaugural speeches are memorable. Among that number we might include Roosevelt’s first, both of Lincoln’s, and, perhaps, Jefferson’s first. 

William Henry Harrison’s was memorable, but not for the reason’s he might have preferred. It was the longest, taking just over two hours to deliver outdoors on a cold, wet, March day. (Inauguration day was originally March 4.) He proceeded from there to serve the shortest term in office, just over 31 days, expiring from pneumonia and septicemia. While it is probably not true that “Old Tippecanoe’s” pneumonia resulted from his delivery of a two hour speech in inclement weather, it likely served as a warning to his successors.

Kennedy’s speech was reasonably brief, running only 14 minutes and 1364 words. So what, in this brief address, is so special?

For one thing, it is quite deliberately aimed at the whole world – not just the people he had just sworn an oath to govern. It might have been, in another setting a great foreign policy speech.

He is also clearly trying to dispel doubts, about whether he, the youngest man ever elected to the post, is up to the job. He does this by by creating an image of the historic forbears who created this great and mighty country he now leads – “For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forbears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.”

He then proceeds to outline the one great concern of his time: “The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.” There it is – in subtle but undoubted form – the one great fear of his nascent presidency, and the world at large. Nuclear war.

At that point, he issues one of the great rhetorical passages of the speech: “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...” It conjures images of an ancient Greek messenger, tiring from his exertions, handing off the torch to the next runner, to light the way to the next city, so the message would not be delayed. What is particularly striking about this image is that the tradition of passing a torch is an invention of the modern Olympic Games, not the ancient ones. It dates back only to 1936!

Next he resorts to one of the most effective techniques of good speech writing – repetition. As we have discussed before, repetition serves the same purpose in a speech, as bullet points do on a piece of paper. It prepares the audience for each point the speaker wants to emphasize.

The phrase is “To those,” and it is an appeal to the world. To “old allies, new states, people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, sister republics south of our border, the United Nations, and finally, nations who would make themselves our adversary.”

To each of these is offered a pledge – save for that last, “nations who would make themselves our adversary.” To those he makes a request: “that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.” It is now nearly a quarter century since President Reagan’s speech in the shadow of the Berlin wall, led to a lessening of tensions between the world’s two great nuclear powers. It somehow seems alarmist to read the words of 50 years ago. But at the time, it was anything but – as the Cuban missile crisis would soon prove.

He again resorts to using repetition, with the phrase: “Let both sides.” It is a challenge to both sides – to use their power to advance the human condition rather than diminish it.

Near the end, he issues a phrase which sounds hauntingly reminiscent of Lincoln’s first inaugural: “In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course.” In Lincoln’s version it sounds like this: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.”

Another haunting phrase from that paragraph is this: “The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.” It can’t help but escape notice that his own older brother would lie in just such a grave, had enough of his remains been recovered to bury, and, that he himself might have occupied such a grave, had things gone just a little worse that dark night in the Solomon Islands.

He expresses the resolve of his administration, and his nation, to defend freedom. Then it is on to the summation – the call to action. And a historic call it is.

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.”

It could have just as easily been – “Don’t ask what your country can do for you.” But that would not have offered the rhetorical flourish which makes the phrase so memorable. Not only that, there is a natural cadence to this phrasing that creates a dramatic pause after “Ask not,” that would have been otherwise lacking.

Video Posted: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

Text Posted: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum 

From The Bully Pulpit – Tom

Gettysburg

Speech By: Abraham Lincoln
Date: November 19, 1863
Location: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Occasion: Dedication of National Cemetery

The Bully Pulpit has already covered the Gettysburg Address. But, since it deservedly resides on Time’s list of Top Ten speeches, it is worth another review. Besides, there is always more to say about this magnificent speech - little appreciated, by those who first heard it.

It is important to consider the context of this speech. Obviously, it was part of the dedication ceremony for the new national cemetery, on the site of the largest battle ever fought on the North American continent. But so much more was at stake than that.

President Lincoln was facing re-election in less than a year. No nation in history had ever been able to host a free election amidst a civil war. His prospects for success in that re-election effort seemed dim. He would prevail in that election, but no one listening knew that.

The battle had occurred on Union soil, because the Army of Northern Virginia had the ability to invade, putting Washington itself at risk. With the lense of historical perspective, we know the South would never again be able to invade North. But those in the crowd did not know that.

After the war, it became obvious that Gettysburg was the battle from which the South could never recover. Its losses over those three days of battle had been too severe. But no one on either side yet knew that.

All those uncertainties which plagued those who heard the Gettysburg address, are no longer apparent to us, in the clear light of historical knowledge.

Lincoln not only sought to address these uncertainties, as well as to honor the dead whose final resting place was being dedicated that day, he had the higher object of inspiring his people on to final victory.

For the first two years of the war, Lincoln had steadfastly maintained the issue was over secession - not slavery. In late 1862 Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect January 1, 1863. By November of that year, Lincoln, speaking at Gettysburg, no longer cast the bitter conflict between the states as a question of union versus secession, but as "a new birth of freedom." In his first sentence he pointed out the nation’s founding had been “dedicated to the proposition that all men are create equal.”

He proceeds with spare, yet masterfully descriptive language. He also uses classic speech techniques such as repetition, particularly in groups of three. “we can not dedicate...we can not consecrate...we can not hallow this ground.”

The phrase “we can not” serves the same purpose as bullets on a sheet of paper do for a reader - it warns of each important point that is about to be made. Notice also he uses “can not” as separate words rather than the more common cannot. The purpose is to make each syllable distinct as part of the emphasis.

As a final trick to capture the audience, Lincoln reverses the repetition technique in the final sentence, placing the repeated word at the end of each thought rather than at the beginning: “- and that government, of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Length (words): 267
Text Posted: Avalon Project - Gettysburg Address

From The Bully Pulpit - Tom

Enchanting the Soul

Columnist Mark Bowden, writing recently on the power of oratory, said: “The real work of rhetoric is to explain and persuade.” All right, that’s hard to argue with, but it describes many uses of words. It describes, for instance, a dry, passionless legal brief.  It even encompasses the police officer’s citation which may have necessitated that legal brief.

Words which merely “explain and persuade” do not necessarily constitute rhetoric. For our purposes, the definition of  rhetoric must meet a higher standard.

If, as Plato described it, rhetoric is the “art of enchanting the soul,” how does that enchantment take place? What is the source of the magic that casts such a spell on a listener? What happy constellation of words constitutes rhetoric?

Rhetoric, at its best, involves the ability to create striking mental images using words.

People no longer crowd close into a stone paved Agora, as in Plato’s day, straining to get within earshot of a speaker. Today, sound systems guarantee everyone can hear what is said.  Still, the power to enchant a listener’s soul is not subordinate to the advances of technology. It is, as it ever was, a force lodged in the writer and speaker.

Even in a world where speeches can be accompanied by power point presentations, or photos projected on a screen to provide illustration, rhetoric - that happy combination of words - still offers the highest power to create and sustain the enchantment which can possess our souls.

Take the image projected in President Kennedy’s inaugural address: “The torch has been passed, to a new generation ... ” It evokes an image of one of Plato’s contemporaries, an ancient Greek runner - Phedipiddes perhaps - arm outstretched, handing off a torch on its journey to the Olympic games.

That the passing of the Olympic torch is a modern invention, first used to open the 1936 Berlin Olympics, matters not. In fact, it demonstrates the power of Kennedy’s rhetoric, to create a mental image of a scene that never existed.

Or, take the way Lincoln chose to begin the Gettysburg address: “Four score and seven years ago, ...” Any number of reviewers have observed that using the number “eighty seven” would have been a far clearer way to communicate the time span of which he was speaking. But Lincoln’s intent was to create a Biblical image for his audience, to remind them their nation was engaged in a noble, even holy, crusade.

There is no precise formula to define what constitutes rhetoric and what does not. Nor is there one which describes how to create it or how not to. In that sense, it is much like Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography - “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it,” (Jacobellis v. Ohio - 1964).

But, just because we can’t define it, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek it. After all, the Grail for which we, as speech writers and listeners alike, must quest, is nothing short of an enchanted soul.

From The Bully Pulpit - Tom

Gettysburg Address

Speech By: Abraham Lincoln
Date: November 19, 1863
Location: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Occasion: Dedication of National Cemetery
Length (words): 267
Video Posted: None Available
Text Posted: Avalon Project - Gettysburg Address

Analysis:
The purpose of this initial post is to establish the format by which we will analyze all other speeches. Volumes have been written on the less than three hundred words of this speech, and this analysis does not endeavor to match them. Instead, it is to show, by way of a commonly familiar work, how we will assess newer speeches.

It should escape no one that this is one of the great political speeches of all time for a reason. Unlike most political speeches, Lincoln does not once engage in self-congratulation or bombast. He mentions neither his role as Commander in Chief, nor his place in the larger war effort. He immediately establishes a shared identity with his audience, "our fathers brought forth," and does so in biblical language, "Four score and seven years," immediately establishing his appeal to a higher set of ideals.

It is a work rich with imagery: "The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract." Without ever saying so, just by using the words "struggled," and "living and dead," Lincoln conveys that the consecration which took place here was in that holiest of all waters - blood.

This is also the time to put to rest one of the great "urban legends" surrounding this speech. It was not written on the back of an envelope. It is brief, but not that brief. It was, in fact, written on a piece of Executive Mansion stationery, and a second lined sheet of paper.

Text:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate...we can not consecrate...we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government: of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.


From The Bully Pulpit - Tom