president of the United States, and delivering his inaugural address. Immediately after reciting the oath of office, President Kennedy turned to address the crowd gathered at the Capitol. His 1366-word inaugural address, the first delivered to a televised audience in color,
Drafting in
Arlington National Cemetery, with the
Lincoln Memorial and
Washington Monument in the background. The speech was crafted by Kennedy and his speech writer
Ted Sorensen. Kennedy had Sorensen study President
Abraham Lincoln's
Gettysburg Address as well as other inaugural speeches. Kennedy began collecting thoughts and ideas for his inauguration speech in late November 1960. He took suggestions from various friends, aides and counselors, including suggestions from clergymen for biblical quotations. Kennedy then made several drafts using his own thoughts and some of those suggestions. Kennedy included in his speech several suggestions made by Harvard economist
John Kenneth Galbraith and by the former Democratic presidential candidate
Adlai Stevenson II. Kennedy's line "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate." is nearly identical to Galbraith's suggestion "We shall never negotiate out of fear. But we shall never fear to negotiate." Stevenson's suggestion "if the free way of life doesn't help the many poor of this world it will never save the few rich." was the basis for Kennedy's line "If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."
Main ideas of the speech Kennedy came into power at the height of the
Cold War with the difficult goals of maintaining peaceful international relations and representing the United States as a strong global force. These themes dominated his inaugural address. Kennedy highlighted the newly discovered dangers of nuclear power and the accelerating
arms race, making the point that a focus on firepower should be replaced with a focus on international relations and helping the impoverished of the world. According to speechwriter
Ted Sorensen, the most important sentence in the speech, expressing the core of Kennedy's policy, was: "For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed." Sorensen revealed in 2007 that John F. Kennedy had five objectives in mind with his speech, all of which, according to Sorensen, were achieved.
Rhetorical elements The central theme of the speech is the relationship between duty and power. This is emphasized by the strong use of juxtaposition in the first part of the speech: "... Man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life". Similarly, in the fifth passage, he says: "United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do." Both passages appeal to the idea of refocusing international values. Again, after exhorting "both sides" to action, he calls on all of "us" "to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle ... against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself," though the phrase "long twilight struggle" came to be associated with the
Cold War struggle against communism.
Kairos – to say or do what is fitting in a given situation – is a main component of classical
rhetoric and is used prominently in this address. Kennedy recognized the American people's anxiety about the Cold War and chose an optimistic tone. He accomplishes this by talking about the future, and repeats the phrase "Let both sides ..." to indicate a way to deal with strained relations while appealing to the goal of international unity. He also phrases negative ideas as opportunities—a challenge, appealing to innately American ideals. In the fourth from last passage he states, "In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger". It was also in his inaugural address that John F. Kennedy spoke his famous words, "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." This use of
antimetabole can be seen even as a thesis statement of his speech—a call to action for the public to do what is right for the greater good. This may be an elegant rephrasing of
Franklin D. Roosevelt's acceptance speech at the
1936 Democratic National Convention:
"To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny." It is also similar to Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' 1884 Memorial Day speech, in which Holmes said, "[Memorial Day] is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return." ==Invited guests==