John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address

Presidential inaugural addresses are composed for two primary audiences. The first audience is the president’s own people, with whom he makes a kind of contract: “This is what I will do with the power you have given me.” The second audience is overseas, especially in foreign capitals, where whole staffs of political analysts spend many hours trying to decode the inaugural text. Those foreign diplomatic readers try to extract every possible nuance of meaning, searching for clues to how the new president will use his power for or against other nations. Kennedy’s address can therefore be read at two levels: first, as an inspiring speech for domestic consumption, and second, as a document that can be dissected for deeper themes and purposes.

Although widely recognized as well phrased, Kennedy’s inaugural address is also well organized. Somewhat like a standard high-school essay, his speech has five parts: an introductory preamble, a valedictory conclusion, and three main parts in between. Kennedy’s preamble is brief but important. He name-checks the key notables in the audience—two past presidents, two vice presidents, the chief Supreme Court justice, and the speaker of the House of Representatives (Paragraph 1). Although these callouts are a convention of inaugural speeches, they serve two special functions in Kennedy’s case. First, as the youngest elected president, he defers respectfully to his elders—and by subtly associating himself with their authority, he enhances his own. This boosts his own implied moral character (ethos). Second, he uses the introduction to segue smoothly into the first main section of the speech. Continuing to relate himself to those who came before, Kennedy uses what in other hands might be a plain recitation of names as a springboard for poetic riffs on the American tradition.

In these riffs, he develops the theme of Historical Continuity (Paragraphs 2-4), emphasizing the links between past and present. He reminds Americans of their roots and calls upon them to continue the fight for freedom and democracy. The sentences in this section toggle between history and the electoral moment, as if they are two aspects of one fact: “I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago” (Paragraph 2). The principles upon which the nation was founded remain relevant and necessary: “The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe—the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God” (Paragraph 3).

The idea that rights come from a power higher than politics is an ancient one, dating back to classical Greece and Rome. Often called Natural Law, this concept was a foundational belief of the Roman Catholicism in which Kennedy was raised. It was also a belief of America’s founding fathers. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that humans had rights from their creator, not from their kings. When Kennedy takes pains to say that “we are the heirs of that first revolution” (Paragraph 4), he achieves meaning on two levels. These rights are in danger from a new revolution, communism. By invoking the ancient past and the American Revolution, Kennedy implicitly contrasts his program with the communist view of rights as a secular-political construct.

Kennedy climaxes this first section of his speech with a famous anointment of his own generation. Power in America is passing from those who planned World War II to those who fought it. This cohort of Americans stands in a noble tradition, and Kennedy calls on them to be worthy of it:

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 (Paragraph 4).

The image of the passing torch became one of the great mental emblems of the 1960s. Many of the millions of young Americans who became politically involved in the decade felt that Kennedy had spoken to them personally in that phrase—that he had passed the torch to them.

On this high note, Kennedy moves into the second main section, in which he focuses on the theme of Globalism and talks about America’s role in global affairs (Paragraphs 5-20). The first section ends with the word “world,” giving Kennedy a smooth segue into a new topic. His concern here is not to establish his own character but to explain his thinking on grave matters. Reflecting the urgency of the Cold War moment, this section runs longer than the other parts of the speech do collectively. In these paragraphs, Kennedy develops the theme of international continuity and unity. Much as he links past to present in his first section, here he links America with the world beyond its borders. Again, he treats two different things as facets of one reality—in this case, the universal human struggle for universal human values.

Like a biblical prophet, he proclaims: “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, to assure the survival and the success of liberty” (Paragraph 5). The vow to “pay any price” became first a mantra for American soldiers in Vietnam and then an embittered refrain for many disillusioned veterans of that conflict, who felt that they had paid the price Kennedy asked, only to be spurned by some of their fellow Americans as that long-running, brutal war became increasingly unpopular.

Kennedy promises developing states that America will not exploit them:

We pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny […And] we shall always hope…to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside (Paragraph 8).

The phrase about riding the tiger alludes to a well-known limerick verse, sometimes attributed to Edward Lear (1812-1888):

There was a young lady of Niger

Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;

They returned from the ride

With the lady inside,

And the smile on the face of the tiger (“There Was a Young Lady of Niger.” All Poetry).

As a parable of colonialism, the stanza suggests that imperial powers (the young lady) found themselves defeated (eaten) by those they sought to ride or dominate (the tiger). This is essentially what occurred during the 1950s and 1960s, when the British, French, and other Europeans found themselves driven out of Asia and Africa. In acknowledging the developing nations’ victory, Kennedy implicitly compliments them; yet doing so in an allusive, jovial quip softens the blow to “those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share” (Paragraph 7). At the same time, the tiger parable warns the Soviets: By using violence in postcolonial nations, the Soviets may be defeated just like the European powers. Most importantly, Kennedy suggests that America will not project itself overseas in the same spirit of hubris, or overweening pride, that caused colonial states to resist their oppressors. Kennedy is saying to post-colonial peoples, “You don’t need to attack us because we’re not going to dominate you.”

He tailors that broad message to the specific case of Latin America. In that part of the world, the US was a dominating power, and Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution played the part of the avenging tiger. To offset Castro’s charisma in the region, Kennedy aims to reset American policy there:

To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge: to convert our good words into good deeds, in a new alliance for progress, to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers. Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house (Paragraph 10).

Kennedy did create an Alliance for Progress in Latin America, and Johnson continued it. The program provided both economic and military assistance to nations committed to democracy and private property. Although critics later said that the program became a graft site for military and political elites, the US achieved Kennedy’s aims. Castro’s authoritarian and anti-American model failed to spread over the next decades except in Nicaragua and, much later, in Venezuela.

In vowing that America will remain the hemispheric master of its own house, Kennedy reiterates commitment to the Monroe Doctrine, a policy of resisting foreign colonization in the Americas. Three months after his speech, Kennedy revived that doctrine with violence, trying to remove the pro-Soviet Castro in a failed CIA-run invasion by Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs. The next year, Nikita Khrushchev directly challenged the Monroe Doctrine by stationing nuclear-capable missiles in Cuba, leading to a tense global crisis.

From his Latin American proposal, Kennedy moves into a seven-paragraph reflection on the dangers of nuclear war (Paragraphs 11-18). Perhaps reflecting the difficulty of the problem, these paragraphs do not develop a sustained argument, or propose more than general solutions. Instead, Kennedy dispenses individually logical statements, leavened with memorable phrases. He warns of “the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science” (Paragraph 12), echoing a phrase on the perversion of science in Winston Churchill’s 1940 “This was their finest hour” speech. He laments that “the steady spread of the deadly atom” has led to a ”balance of terror” (Paragraph 14). He agrees in principle to arms control: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate” (Paragraph 15).

Kennedy ends his foreign-policy section with a moving paean to technology’s benefits, underscoring the positive side of humanity’s Promethean progress. Building into an affirmative refrain in which four consecutive paragraphs start with the injunction to “Let both sides” do X, he pleads:

Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce (Paragraph 18).

With this inspiring passage, Kennedy transitions into the final section of his speech, calling Americans to action. This part of the text appeals to the emotions (pathos) of the audience. Highlighting the theme of The Blessings and Burdens of Freedom, he uses religious language to underscore the moral imperative of justice and freedom, quoting biblical prophet Isaiah (Paragraph 19). He describes the national task ahead as a “long twilight struggle” (Paragraph 23) in the “hour of maximum danger” (Paragraph 25). The whole speech comes to a climax in its most enduring line: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” (Paragraph 26). Like his call for negotiation, Kennedy’s call to duty employs a simple antithetical structure (not this-that, but that-this) to create an arresting and memorable slogan.

The speech concludes with a comparatively bland farewell paragraph that evokes a minister dismissing his congregation. The president-elect tells his listeners to “go forth” and “lead the land we love,” in God’s name (Paragraph 28). He ends as he began, invoking and consecrating his work to a higher authority.