Real Change News | From the Edge of History

September 24, 2008
Vol: 15 No: 40

Interview

From the Edge of History

by: Robin Lindley , Contributing Writer

Ted Sorensen was JFK’s speechwriter and closest advisor, and now he’s helping another young candidate rise to power.

President John F. Kennedy and advisor Ted Sorensen, who has documented his relationship to the president in a new book, Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History (Harper Collins, 2008). Photo from the author’s collection.

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For the past four decades, Ted Sorensen has led a distinguished career in international law. Despite his many achievements as an attorney, however, he is best known as the closest advisor to Pres. John F. Kennedy — and is seen by many commentators as the greatest American presidential speechwriter.

Kennedy called Sorensen his “intellectual blood bank.” And Sorensen was so close to JFK that some dubbed him the “Deputy President.” In A Thousand Days, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., reported that both men “shared so much — the same quick tempo, detached intelligence, deflationary wit, realistic judgment, candor in speech, coolness in crisis — that, when it came to policy and speeches, they operated nearly as one.”

Now 80, and with the residuals of a stroke that damaged his vision, Sorensen remains active in law and international affairs. He also advises presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama — a bright, young, and hopeful politician who Sorensen sees as JFK’s heir, and the person who can end the present “hideous, dangerous, reckless chapter in our foreign policy.”

Sorensen’s acclaimed new autobiography, Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History (Harper Collins, 2008), the product of six years of writing, reflects his idealism and hope for the future. The book recounts Sorensen’s childhood nurtured by a progressive and idealistic family in Lincoln, Nebraska; his historic JFK years with challenges such as the Cold War, the civil rights struggle, and the space race; and his subsequent law career advising governments and multinational organizations and meeting with world leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Anwar Sadat, and Fidel Castro.

Sorensen also wrote Kennedy, his bestselling 1965 biography of JFK, as well as several other books and numerous articles on law and politics. He lives in New York City with his wife, Gillian.

In a recent telephone interview, Sorensen discussed his new book, the coming election, his background, his relationship with President Kennedy, and more.

Is your autobiography in part a response to the belligerent policies of the Bush-Cheney administration?
Very much so. I state in the preface I was spurred to write this book by the dismal state of affairs in Washington and the fact that the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld administration had repudiated and acted contrary to everything John F. Kennedy stood for and tried to do in foreign policy.

John Kennedy believed in international law, international organizations like the United Nations, international alliances, and therefore multilateral diplomacy. He did not think that in a world as ugly and complicated as this one that the United States could go it alone. He never would have dreamed of a unilateral, pre-emptive invasion of another country, particularly one that was not posing any specific threat to the security and survival of the United States, the way Bush and Cheney did with respect to Iraq.

We need a new team in Washington that will close this hideous, dangerous, reckless chapter in our foreign policy and a new administration that believes not only in international law, but in communicating with those leaders of other countries who are hostile toward us.

You’ve endorsed Sen. Barack Obama, and you obviously share his view that we must talk to our enemies as well as our friends.
Yes. Kennedy resolved the Cuban missile crisis — the most dangerous 13 days in the history of mankind, as historians call it by his willingness to communicate with Soviet Chairman Khrushchev, and through those communications, to negotiate with him.

Some say Sen. Obama is merely providing hope and words.
People who say that are permitting partisanship to blind them to what the world and the American presidency are all about. It was words that enabled Kennedy to respond to the missiles in Cuba, first with the quarantine, and then with communications with Khrushchev that persuaded him he could take those missiles out of Cuba without the United States firing a shot.

What parallels do you see between Sen. Obama and Pres. Kennedy?
One of the reasons I became interested some time ago in Sen. Obama was that people were saying he had no chance of being elected president because he was born Black in white America. Forty-eight years ago they said Kennedy had no chance of being elected president because he’d been baptized Catholic in Protestant America.

And then people would say Obama is a young, first-term senator. When Kennedy started out, he was an even younger first-term senator. But Kennedy showed that it’s possible to transcend those ethnic and demographic limitations by reaching out to all kinds of voters, including Independents and Republicans as well as Democrats, and including minority and young voters who hadn’t turned out in large numbers in the past, and that’s exactly what Obama has been doing. He’s been appealing to younger voters, ethnic voters, as well as every other kind of voter, and he too, I believe, will transcend race and religion and region in building a new political coalition in this country.

The excitement of Obama’s supporters must be reminiscent of the 1960 campaign.
Yes, very much so. [Irish poet] Seamus Heaney [wrote] about hope being questioned on this side of the grave “but once in a lifetime.” He said there is a mighty surge of justice, and “hope and history rhyme.” I’m only 80, but twice in my lifetime I’ve seen that mighty surge of justice, first with Kennedy, now with Obama, and, once again, “hope and history rhyme.”

After law school in Nebraska, you moved to Washington D.C. Both Sen. Henry M. Jackson of Washington state and Sen. John F. Kennedy offered you jobs at about the same time in 1952. How did you decide to serve with Sen. Kennedy rather than Sen. Jackson?
At the time, I knew nothing of Jackson’s hawkish inclinations or even that he would later be known as “The Senator from Boeing.” Instead, I chose Kennedy because [he asked me] to work on a legislative program to revive the sagging New England economy, where unemployment was high and new investment was low. Sen. Jackson said I had a good reputation as a lawyer and he needed somebody like that to get his name in the papers. He also said he liked my Scandinavian name because that would go over big back in Seattle. And I chose Kennedy without much difficulty.

Despite all our surface differences — he was a millionaire’s son, a Roman Catholic, a war hero, a Harvard graduate, and I was at the opposite end of almost all of those — we wanted this to be a better country, we both believed in public service, we both were interested in public policy, and we both wanted to see a peaceful world.

Could you talk about your writing process with John F. Kennedy? It seems that you both worked on his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Profiles in Courage and many of his speeches, and there’s no certainty about who created specific phrases or sections.
Yes, it was a collaborative process, and I never forgot who was making decisions, who was in charge of policy, whose values and beliefs those speeches and writings like Profiles in Courage were to be represented on the page. Even though I helped with the words, the true author of all of Jack Kennedy’s speeches and writings was Jack Kennedy.

The failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by anti-Castro forces in 1961 was an early blow to the administration. Were you involved in the planning of that action?
Not at all. My original assignment in the White House was domestic policy and I had more than enough to do during those first hundred days, when Kennedy was sending dozens of messages to the Congress about domestic policy.

After it failed, Kennedy asked me and his brother [Attorney General] Bob thereafter to sit in on National Security Council meetings not because we became overnight experts after the Bay of Pigs, but because we could ask tough questions.

He kicked himself for paying too much attention to holdovers from the military and intelligence communities — they had experience and medals and ribbons, but they didn’t have the same kind of common sense that he thought Bobby [Kennedy] and I might bring to that table. So, he didn’t make it worse when they asked him to. They asked him, when it failed, to send in U.S. bombers. He wasn’t going to do that and precipitate World War III.

And he also became more skeptical about using military might to solve political problems. As a result, when the Joint Chiefs gave him recommendations about sending troops to Indochina — not merely advisors and instructors, as Eisenhower had done, but combat troop divisions — he never did it, even though they urged him to throughout his administration. They also urged him to bomb North Vietnam, and he never did that either. All that started under his successor.

In your view, Kennedy would not have escalated the U.S. military involvement in Vietnam?
That is definitely my view. In fact, in his last month he was talking about taking out most of the advisors we had there by the end of the year [1963].

And these lessons from the Bay of Pigs fiasco came to play in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Exactly. In some ways, the Bay of Pigs, for all of its hurt and harm, was a blessing because it caused Kennedy to change his personnel, change his policies, change his procedure by which decisions were made. And when the Soviet Union secretly rushed nuclear missiles into Cuba, Kennedy wanted to know all his options, not like George W. Bush being handed one option to invade Iraq and he stuck with it.

Kennedy also wanted to know the pros and cons of every option. Not just unilateral military, but multilateral diplomatic and military, and combinations of diplomatic and military. As a result, we came up with a very different answer to Khrushchev’s missiles, and ultimately, that persuaded Khrushchev to withdraw his missiles without firing a shot.

He gave a memorable speech on foreign relations at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1961.
That may have been the least reported speech he made and the best foreign policy speech he made. He said, among other things, that we’re not going to be appeasers or warmongers; we’re going to be Americans. And we are six percent of the world and we have neither the right nor ability to impose our will on or our system on the other 94 percent.

And his June 1963 American University policy speech echoed that view.
Very much so. It was the first speech any president had made calling for a re-examination of the cold war, a re-examination of our relations with the Soviet Union, and a re-examination of what we meant by peace. He went on to put it into practice by proposing in that speech a unilateral initiative for a moratorium on nuclear testing because of the harm that it did to our nation’s health and environment.

In the touching epilogue of your JFK biography, Kennedy, you reflect on what might have been if Kennedy had not been assassinated. You mention also that he talked with you about how he could be shot by a sniper, and he was very aware of that.
How true.

Do you agree with the conclusion of the Warren Commission that a lone assassin killed Pres. Kennedy?
I examine that question for the first time in my new book, and I conclude that as flawed as the Warren Commission might have been to get a report out in time to calm and quiet the country, there has never been any worthy, credible evidence that would stand up for me as a lawyer in court proving that there was any conspiracy or anyone else behind the lone gunman who turned out to be a lucky sharpshooter.

What’s your next project?
I just spent six years writing this book, and I need a break. The next project is to get Obama elected president.

He’s very fortunate to have your expertise and advice.
We’ll see. Don’t forget, a torch has been passed to a new generation.

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