All leaders make speeches. Great leaders are remembered for theirs. John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, certainly, is one speech for which the 35th President is remembered. Well known for the line "Ask not what your country can do for you," the speech offers numerous lessons for business leaders looking to bolster their own presentation skills. Here are six tips, culled from Thurston Clarke's Ask Not, the 2004 book devoted to the history and composition of the speech. 1. Keep it short. JFK's inaugural address is 1,362 words long. The total time of delivery is under 14 minutes. It is the fourth-shortest inaugural address in history. 2. Study your predecessors. Ted Sorensen, Kennedy's main speechwriter, studied all 43 previous inaugural addresses. He specifically studied them for length. His handwritten notes--from a meeting he had with JFK after the 1960 election--read: "Count words in Ike '57, FDR '41, Wilson '17, Wilson '13" and "Make it the shortest since TR (except for FDR's abbreviated wartime ceremony in 1945)." 3. Don't talk about yourself. Another Sorensen note reads: "Eliminate I specifics." Which meant, reduce use of the first-person singular. Indeed, the speech uses "I" quite sparingly. There's an "I" in its opening paragraph ("For I have sworn before you and Almighty God"), before it shifts largely into "we" and "our" and "us" for the remainder. Exceptions come toward the end, when Kennedy invokes "my fellow citizens" and "my fellow Americans." He also states, in the fourth-to-last paragraph: "I do not shrink from this responsibility--I welcome it." 4. Rank your priorities. Sorensen's marginalia include the following: "The numbers," writes Clarke, "appear to rank the topics in order of importance." The letters, in turn, "set out their logical sequence" in the speech. 5. Solicit ideas from minds you respect and trust. While Sorensen was Kennedy's main speechwriter, he was hardly the only one who influenced the form and content of the inaugural address. Between the election and early January, 1961, the Kennedy team solicited ideas from a group including former Democratic candidate for president Adlai Stevenson and Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith. Many of these ideas found their way into the final speech. 6. Write it yourself. Whether Kennedy deserves credit as the author of his speech, whether Sorensen does, or whether the final product is an amalgam, is debated to this day. Clarke posits that Kennedy deserves credit as the author. A recent article in Slate leans toward Sorensen. But the point is, people care. Yes, you want to solicit ideas from others. But it matters--for you and your legacy--that the speech is truly yours. "More than any of the countless books about JFK, it is his inaugural that explains the Kennedy phenomenon to the heart as well as the mind," writes Clarke, in stating the importance of Kennedy's authorship. "To deny him full credit for it not only diminishes his legacy and weakens his claim on the hearts and minds of future generations, it also distances him, and us, from a speech that is a distillation of his experiences, philosophy, and character." Show captionJohn F Kennedy delivered his inaugural address on January 20, 1961 Great speeches of the 20th centuryTed Sorenson Sun 22 Apr 2007 22.10 AEST
John F Kennedy's inaugural address – delivered on a bitterly cold, snow-laden January 20 1961 – was a joint effort, like most of his major speeches during the previous eight years of our collaboration, and was the culmination of his long uphill quest for the presidency. He won that prize in the previous November's election with the narrowest popular vote margin. He was the first Catholic to be entrusted with the presidency and, at 43, was the youngest ever elected. The inaugural address, in my view, was not Kennedy's best speech. That honour goes to his American University commencement address, June 10 1963, in which he called, as no American president or other western leader had ever called, for a re-examination of the cold war, a re-examination of our country's relations with Russia, and a re-examination of the meaning of peace. Before that challenge to his countrymen was out, the new president unilaterally declared a suspension of American nuclear testing in the atmosphere. The inaugural may not even have been Kennedy's most important speech historically, in terms of its impact on our planet. That description belongs to his televised address of October 22 1962, which revealed to the world the sudden and theretofore secret presence of Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles on Cuba, merely 90 miles from US shores, and firmly set forth his response, formulated over the previous week, seeking the peaceful withdrawal of those missiles (which, six grim days later, he achieved without firing a shot). Nevertheless, Kennedy's inaugural address was world-changing, heralding the commencement of a new American administration and foreign policy determined upon a peaceful victory in the west's long cold war struggle with the Soviet Union over the world's future direction. JFK had five personal objectives embarking upon that speech, and achieved them all. 1. Recognising that his youthfulness had caused doubts among such venerable allied leaders as Harold Macmillan, Charles De Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer, he wanted to convey his seriousness of purpose and knowledgable grasp of global issues. 2. Speaking at the height of the cold war, he wanted to make clear to Soviet chairman Nikita Khrushchev that America's new leader preferred not a "hot war" but genuine peace, negotiations and cooperation; that, while standing firm against any armed encroachment on freedom, he was seeking to tone down cold war rancour and tensions. 3. He wanted to win more friends for the United States and the west among the neutral governments of the third world by stressing his concern for global poverty as well as his opposition to dictatorship. 4. Long a student of history, and with a clear sense of his own place in it, he wanted his first speech as president to fit the moment – to be eloquent, shorter than most, using elevated language to summon the American people to the challenges, sacrifices and discipline that he knew lay ahead. 5. Finally, recognising that both his narrow margin of and his party's loss of seats in the House of Representatives would create serious obstacles to his governance, he wanted no trace of political partisanship in the speech. He thus avoided virtually all domestic issues as inherently divisive. He also wanted to stress that his age - far from representing an excuse to shrink from responsibility - represented instead the "passing of the torch" of leadership to a new generation ready to assume great responsibilities. He sounded themes too little heard since his untimely death some 1,000 days later: that "civility is not a sign of weakness"; that the United Nations is "our last best hope"; that the purpose of acquiring superiority in armaments was to be certain "beyond doubt that they will never be employed"; and that the United States sought not to act alone but to join with its adversaries as well as its allies in a "grand global alliance" against the "common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself". Those who thought his vow to "pay any price, bear any burden ... oppose any foe" was a fierce cry of the cold war failed to read those other passages. In working on the speech, he did not ask me to "clear" the draft with the military joint chiefs of staff or the leaders of both parties in Congress. It was a statement of core values - his and the nation's at that time - that he very much believed needed to be conveyed. They still need to be conveyed, more now than 46 years ago. Where is the leader wise and courageous enough to convey them? · Ted Sorensen is an author and lawyer. He was special counsel and adviser to John F Kennedy and was his primary speechwriter {{#ticker}} {{topLeft}} {{bottomLeft}} {{topRight}} {{bottomRight}} {{#goalExceededMarkerPercentage}}{{/goalExceededMarkerPercentage}} {{/ticker}}{{#paragraphs}}{{.}} {{/paragraphs}}{{highlightedText}}{{#choiceCards}}{{/choiceCards}} We will be in touch to remind you to contribute. Look out for a message in your inbox in . If you have any questions about contributing, please contact us. Topics
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