thesis for jfk inaugural address

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Milestone Documents

President John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address (1961)

Citation: Inaugural Address, Kennedy Draft, 01/17/1961; Papers of John F. Kennedy: President's Office Files, 01/20/1961-11/22/1963; John F. Kennedy Library; National Archives and Records Administration.

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On January 20, 1961, President John F. Kennedy delivered his inaugural address in which he announced that "we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty."

The inaugural ceremony is a defining moment in a president’s career — and no one knew this better than John F. Kennedy as he prepared for his own inauguration on January 20, 1961. He wanted his address to be short and clear, devoid of any partisan rhetoric and focused on foreign policy.

Kennedy began constructing his speech in late November, working from a speech file kept by his secretary and soliciting suggestions from friends and advisors. He wrote his thoughts in his nearly indecipherable longhand on a yellow legal pad.

While his colleagues submitted ideas, the speech was distinctly the work of Kennedy himself. Aides recounted that every sentence was worked, reworked, and reduced. The meticulously crafted piece of oratory dramatically announced a generational change in the White House. It called on the nation to combat "tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself" and urged American citizens to participate in public service.

The climax of the speech and its most memorable phrase – "Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country" – was honed down from a thought about sacrifice that Kennedy had long held in his mind and had expressed in various ways in campaign speeches.

Less than six weeks after his inauguration, on March 1, President Kennedy issued an executive order establishing the Peace Corps as a pilot program within the Department of State. He envisioned the Peace Corps as a pool of trained American volunteers who would go overseas to help foreign countries meet their needs for skilled manpower. Later that year, Congress passed the Peace Corps Act, making the program permanent.

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Vice President Johnson, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, President Truman, Reverend Clergy, fellow citizens:

We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom--symbolizing an end as well as a beginning--signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forbears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.

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. And yet 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.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. 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.

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.

This much we pledge--and more.

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do--for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.

To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, 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. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom--and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.

To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required--not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

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.

To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support--to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective--to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak--and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.

We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.

But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course--both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind's final war.

So let us begin anew--remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.

Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms--and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.

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.

Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah--to "undo the heavy burdens . . . (and) let the oppressed go free."

And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.

All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.

Now the trumpet summons us again--not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need--not as a call to battle, though embattled we are-- but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"--a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.

Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?

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. I do not shrink from this responsibility--I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it--and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

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

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

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Rhetorical Mastery: an Analysis of John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address

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Inaugural Address (1961)

January 20, 1961

Introduction

The Cold War was a major influence on John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, shaping almost every paragraph. In a much-quoted passage, Kennedy referred to a new generation of Americans (himself included – he was just 44 years old upon taking the presidency) who would carry on the U.S. commitment to protecting liberty at home and expanding liberty abroad. Both of his predecessors, Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, had made and honored this commitment (See Truman , Truman , Truman , Eisenhower , and Eisenhower ) but Kennedy suggested there was no limit to what the United States could – or would – do to advance its Cold War aims. At the same time, Kennedy called for a new spirit of international cooperation to aid in peaceful decolonization, global poverty reduction, and nuclear disarmament. Notable for its eloquence and brevity, the address also conveyed an optimism and confidence about the limitless power and ability of the United States to better the world at the start of a new decade. By the late 1960s, some of this optimism will have faded. For example, Kennedy authorized U.S. military action to help South Vietnam defend itself against a communist takeover (See Rusk and McNamara ), but the difficulties and costs of that mission led President Nixon to offer a scaled-back statement of American global military commitments in 1969 (See Nixon ).

Source: John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961. Available at https://goo.gl/tYv9zJ .

We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom – symbolizing an end as well as a beginning – signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forbears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.

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. And yet 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.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. 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.

This much we pledge – and more.

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do – for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.

To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, 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. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom – and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.

To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required – not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

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.

To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support – to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective – to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak – and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.

We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.

But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course – both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war.

So let us begin anew – remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.

Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms – and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.

Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah – to “undo the heavy burdens . . . (and) let the oppressed go free.”

Now the trumpet summons us again – not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need – not as a call to battle, though embattled we are – but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation” – a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.

Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?

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. I do not shrink from this responsibility – I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it – and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

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

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Farewell Address (1961)

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A rhetorical analysis of john f. kennedy's "inaugural address" of january 29, 1961.

Marjorie T. Hutton , Eastern Illinois University

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Master of Science in Education (MSEd)

Semester of Degree Completion

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Jon J. Hopkins

Recommended Citation

Hutton, Marjorie T., "A Rhetorical Analysis of John F. Kennedy's "Inaugural Address" of January 29, 1961" (1967). Masters Theses . 4212. https://thekeep.eiu.edu/theses/4212

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Main Topics of Kennedy's Inaugural Address

The Russian Leader Who Organized a Totalitarian State During the 1930s

"My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." - John F. Kennedy

Those words still ring true today nearly sixty years after Kennedy spoke them on his inauguration day. John F. Kennedy's inaugural address was one of the shortest ever, but it's also widely regarded as one of the most powerful. He spoke on the broad topics of liberty, peace and democratic freedoms, and addressed his words to both Americans and people abroad. A major underlying theme is the role of the United States as a world leader in furthering these liberties to other regions and countries. He also emphasized the desire for peace, including calling for Soviet cooperation to end the threat of war and nuclear destruction, while simultaneously underscoring U.S. intentions to lead and work from a position of strength.

President Kennedy emphasized the significance of personal and national freedom as the core tenets of democracy. In an era when the fight for civil rights was at the forefront, the importance of freedom as a key theme is evident throughout his speech. Examples include his reference to the election and inauguration as a "celebration of freedom" and in his commitment to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

Poverty and Oppression

Kennedy addressed a worldwide audience with his calls for nations to band together to lift people out of poverty and free them from colonial or tyrannical oppression. He presented these calls as a moral imperative for Americans and all people of faith. He also urged the United Nations to become an activist body, not just a forum for speeches, in its efforts to abolish poverty, colonialism and oppression throughout the world. These key themes are captured in the famous phrase "trumpet summons us again ... struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself."

The Cold War was the key international dynamic of the time, pitting the former Soviet Union and its allies against the United States and its western allies. Both sides sought to maintain or expand their influence in regions around the world as well as through the dangerous expansion of nuclear arsenals. Kennedy used his inaugural speech to warn the Soviets and their allies against pushing the world to the brink of a possible nuclear war again. He also made clear U.S. intentions to protect freedom and democracy in the western hemisphere against Soviet incursions or influence-seeking.

Call to Greatness

The speech both started and ended with Kennedy's call to Americans to rise up to greatness and reach their full potential, both as individuals and as a nation. He stated explicitly that, "The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans" to fight for the expansion of democratic freedoms and prosperity throughout the world, and to counter any efforts by others to erode human or civil rights around the world. He included one of his most famous lines: "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country." He ended his speech by reminding Americans, "Here on earth God's work must truly be our own."

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As a national security analyst for the U.S. government, Molly Thompson wrote extensively for classified USG publications. Thompson established and runs a strategic analysis company, is a professional genealogist and participates in numerous community organizations.Thompson holds degrees from Wellesley and Georgetown in psychology, political science and international relations.

John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, 1961 Essay

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This presentation was effective because President Kennedy was able to communicate his feelings and ideas to the public openly. His opening tone was warm and this endeared him to the audience. His voice, body expressions and reassuring smile made Americans have confidence in his ability as their new leader. This made it easy for him to strike a strong rapport with all dignitaries who had attended the ceremony.

The President was humble in victory and this showed that he was ready to work with all people in his quest to build a united nation. He showed that his Presidency was going to set high standards of leadership because he was ready to be judged more by his performance in office rather than mere rhetoric (Kennedy). The speech revealed the strong charisma which President Kennedy was famous for, which was just one of his many admirable traits.

He was passionate about human rights, justice, equality for all and freedom; ideals which are traditionally associated with the US as a nation. The inauguration speech was a testimony to the fact that President Kennedy’s administration was willing to practice these ideals to make America strong and united. He showed his willingness to make America more progressive economically, socially and culturally (Kennedy).

This inaugural address showed his traits as a statesman who was willing to transcend racial, ideological, cultural and religious barriers to reach out to leaders of other states. He revealed his own selfless virtues as a leader who was willing to accommodate dissenting views in his own country. His words offered encouragement to people from all different backgrounds to work hard to improve their own welfare in society.

President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration address came at a critical point in the history of the U.S as a nation.This speech showed that he had a lot of enthusiasm in his role as the country’s new leader which made America proud as a nation. He was an inspiring leader who was in touch with feelings and aspirations of what fellow citizens in his country wanted. President Kennedy came to office at the height of the Cold War between U.S.A and the then, U.S.S.R.

The two super powers were engaged in a battle to dominate global affairs through their capitalist and communist political ideologies, respectively (Kennedy). When he assumed office, President Kennedy faced many challenges as a leader which seemed insurmountable at the time. Through his words, he managed to uplift the morale and pride of his fellow Americans, who were going through tough political times.

Historically, President Kennedy is regarded as one of the best leaders that served America. His inaugural address portrayed him as a leader who was not afraid to make sacrifices for the benefit of all Americans. He proved that he was ready to use his wisdom to steer the country to greater heights both economically and socially.

President Kennedy’s address showed that he was committed to the welfare of his people; a trait which many modern political leaders do not have (Kennedy). He had defeated his challenger in the election by a very narrow margin yet his win proved pivotal in America’s history. His presidency was a calming influence to a nation which was becoming restless about the intentions of U.S.S.R regarding its support for Fidel Castro of Cuba.

Works Cited

Kennedy, John F. U.S. Presidential Inaugural Address . You Tube, 1961. Speech.

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IvyPanda. (2018, December 19). John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, 1961. https://ivypanda.com/essays/john-f-kennedys-inaugural-address-1961/

"John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, 1961." IvyPanda , 19 Dec. 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/john-f-kennedys-inaugural-address-1961/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, 1961'. 19 December.

IvyPanda . 2018. "John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, 1961." December 19, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/john-f-kennedys-inaugural-address-1961/.

1. IvyPanda . "John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, 1961." December 19, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/john-f-kennedys-inaugural-address-1961/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, 1961." December 19, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/john-f-kennedys-inaugural-address-1961/.

JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY, “INAUGURAL ADDRESS” (20 JANUARY 1961)

Classroom activities.

What are the characteristics of good presidential inaugurals, as laid out by Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson in their article, “Inaugurating the Presidency,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 25 (1985): 394-411? What distinguishes a merely good inaugural from a truly great inaugural?
Kennedy’s Inaugural Address is filled with visual imagery. Identify some of the passages in the speech in which Kennedy used language to create “word pictures.” An example of this might be the following: “Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but 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.” Which visuals images in the speech do you find most compelling—and why.
One of the stylistic tools used by Kennedy was anaphora, or the repetition of a phrase at the beginning of a sentence. Identify passages where anaphora is employed in Kennedy’s speech. Why do you think he used this stylistic device? Do you think he used anaphora effectively? How did the use of the device affect the tone or rhythm of the speech?
The election of 1960 was one of the most bitterly divided elections in American history, rivaling the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Campbell and Jamieson argue that one of the tasks for a president in an inaugural address is to unify the country. Identify specific passages in Kennedy’s Inaugural Address where you think he appealed to Republicans or tried to unify the American people in general.
Identify passages in Kennedy’s Inaugural Address where he polarized the world into two camps, those who identify with the United States and those who identify with the Soviet Union or communism. Why do you think Kennedy polarized the world in this fashion? Do you think this reflected the realities of world politics in the 1960s, or did Kennedy oversimplify the situation? What are some of the characteristics that he assigned to these two “worlds” in the Inaugural Address? Did he portray one side as “good” and one side as “bad,” or was he simply acknowledging that there were two different systems of government in the world at that time?
Read Kennedy’s Inaugural Address before class. Then, together as a class, listen to an audio or video recording of the speech. What elements of the speech were emphasized or came across differently in Kennedy’s oral delivery of the address? Was the experience of listening to or watching the speech different than the experience of reading it? How?
Kennedy proposed five ways for “both sides” to unite. Was he able to accomplish any of these goals during his presidency? Do you think that he or later presidents made good on his promise to explore “what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us”?

Student Research

Using the criteria laid out by Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson in their article, “Inaugurating the Presidency,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 25 (1985): 394-411, compare Kennedy’s Inaugural Address to a more recent presidential inaugural in a research paper. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Kennedy speech in comparison to the other inaugural address you examined? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each speech, in terms of the criteria Campbell and Jamieson lay out. Overall, which do you think is the better speech? After making the comparison, do you think Kennedy’s Inaugural Address deserves to be ranked as one of the greatest inaugural addresses in American history? Does the other inaugural address you examined also deserve to be counted among the “great” inaugurals?
Read Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Farewell Address” (available at https://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/farewell_address.html ) and compare Eisenhower’s vision of American foreign policy with that of John F. Kennedy, as articulated in his Inaugural Address. Write a summary of the attitude toward American foreign policy expressed by each speaker. Which vision do you think has had a greater impact on twentieth-century American foreign policy? Are the two visions complementary, or did John F. Kennedy propose a fundamentally different course for America than Eisenhower?
Visit the Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum website: http://www.jfklibrary.org/ and specifically the section entitled “JFK in History”: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical%20Resources/JFK%20in%20History . Write a paper where you discuss how the Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum portrays the cold war and the role of President Kennedy’s role in world affairs? How do they portray the legacy of Kennedy in U.S. foreign policy?
Examine the list of the “100 Top Speeches” of the twentieth century compiled by Stephen E. Lucas and Martin J. Medhurst in Words of a Century: The Top 100 American Speeches, 1900-1999 (the list is also available at AmericaRhetoric.com). Many of these “top speeches” were ceremonial or so-called “epideictic” speeches delivered by presidents, including Kennedy and FDR’s inaugural addresses, Ronald Reagan’s tribute to the astronauts who died in the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger , and others. In a position paper, address the following questions: Why do you think there are so many ceremonial speeches on the list of the “top 100” speeches? Is there something about an inaugural address or a tribute that makes it more memorable or timeless than, say, a speech about a new policy?
Campbell and Jamieson argue that a presidential inaugural must be both stylistically pleasing and politically substantive. Write a paper where you assess whether or not you think this is true? Why or why not? Examine several other presidential addresses for the paper—in addition to Kennedy’s—and discuss both their stylistic characteristics and their substantive statements about that president’s proposed policies or broader “vision” of America and its future.

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The Bush administration’s war in Iraq has sometimes been compared to the 1960s conflict in Vietnam. Some argue that Kennedy’s foreign policy encouraged the entanglement of the United States in wars such as Vietnam. Others contend that Kennedy wanted the United States to serve as advisors in Vietnam but would not have approved of the escalation of the war that came after his death. Read the following opinion articles: Robert L. Bartley’s “Kennedy’s Vietnam,” http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB105573085399712100 , and James Galbraith’s “Kennedy, Vietnam, and Iraq,” http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/11/22/vietnam/ . Write a response paper agreeing or disagreeing with one or both of these articles.
The United States is but one nation in a rapidly globalizing world. With the nation’s economic and military power, some argue that the United States has a moral obligation to defend freedom and protect human rights around the world; others claim that the United States has no business telling other countries how to act or intervene in their affairs. Given the current international exigencies, do you think that the United States is too quick (or not quick enough) to intervene outside its own borders? Do you agree that the U.S. government has a moral obligation to promote and defend liberty and freedom around the world? Why or why not?
Find the websites of your senators and representatives in Congress and identify their positions on the major controversies over U.S. foreign policy in the 1990s and 2000s. Where did your elected representatives stand on the U.S. involvement in Somalia in the early 1990s? On U.S. intervention in the Balkans in the mid-1990s? On the U.S. bombing of Iraq in 1998? On the invasion of Afghanistan in 2002? And on the invasion of Iraq in 2003? Using the Congressional Record or their current websites, describe how your elected representatives have justified their positions on these matters. Do you agree or disagree with your elected officials on these various American interventions abroad?
As mentioned in the essay, “American exceptionalism” refers is the belief that the United States is unique in history and that the whole world would be better off if all nations imitated the American “experiment” in democracy, liberty, and freedom. Trace the historical roots of American exceptionalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, looking at the following speeches on U.S. foreign policy: Theodore Roosevelt’s “The Strenuous Life” and Woodrow Wilson’s “Pueblo Speech” (both speeches are featured on the Voices of Democracy website, www.voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu .) Then, consider George W. Bush’s rationale for U.S. foreign policy in the years following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (see examples of Bush’s speeches on the Voices of Democracy website, www.voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu ). Can you identify specific elements or themes of American exceptionalism in the various speeches you examined? If so, are there differences between the “exceptionalism” at the turn of the twentieth century and that at the turn of the twenty-first century? If, on the other hand, you do not find evidence of American “exceptionalism” in the various speeches, how do these various political leaders justify America’s active involvement and leadership in world affairs?
The United States has been called the “lone superpower” since the downfall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Do you think the end of the cold war has brought about fundamental changes in American foreign policy? Has Kennedy’s call to “pay any price, bear any burden . . . to assure the survival and success of liberty” become obsolete? As starting points in your research, examine these two foreign policy documents: Bill Clinton’s “A National Security Strategy for a New Century,” 1998, available at http://clinton2.nara.gov/WH/EOP/NSC/html/documents/nssr.pdf , and George W. Bush’s “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” 2002, available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2002/nss.pdf . Pay particular attention to how these documents define threats to the United States and propose solutions for lessening or eliminating these threats.

Last updated May 4, 2016

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This summer, you can carry forward President Kennedy's legacy with DOUBLE the impact!

Inaugural address - transcript.

Vice President Johnson, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, President Truman, Reverend Clergy, fellow citizens:

This much we pledge--and more.

Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but 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. We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed. But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course--both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind's final war. So let us begin anew--remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us. Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms--and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations. 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. Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah--to "undo the heavy burdens . . . (and) let the oppressed go free." And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved. All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin. In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe. Now the trumpet summons us again--not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need--not as a call to battle, though embattled we are-- but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"--a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself. Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort? 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. I do not shrink from this responsibility--I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it--and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man. Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

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Observer & Eccentric

From the Free Press archive: The nightmare is not over, shootings show

Editor's note: A week ago, the nation was stunned to watch an attempt to assassinate 2024 candidate and former President Donald Trump . Here is a look back at part of the Free Press' coverage of the attempt to assassinate sitting commander in chief, President Ronald Reagan. This article, in which the writer asks some of the same questions posed in the last week and in the aftermath of mass shootings across the country, published March 31, 1981.

WASHINGTON — We had thought, perhaps, that our long national nightmare was over.

It had been 5 years since a shot had been fired at a president and nearly a dozen years from that agonizing era between 1963 and 1968 when John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were slain.

The politics of violence, hatred and confrontation somehow had seemed to be abating. The Vietnam War was now only an agonizing memory from which to make films. In much of the country, not everywhere, racial violence and the threat of violence had seemed to be a memory of the past.

A smiling, pleasant president, a man of obvious goodwill and good humor had come to the White House, declaring as he did in his Inaugural address that we Americans "have every right to dream heroic dreams."

BUT WITH brutal suddenness Monday afternoon we learned that the nightmare is not over. We are not out of it. There is no promise of a era of peacefulness to nurse our national wounds. All the old, haunting questions are certain to be raised again.

What is it in our society that breeds the madness of blind attempts at political assassination; men seeking to kill national leaders whom they do not even know?

Is there a cause? Or better, is there a cure?

Can a democratic society survive if men insist on resorting to violence, for whatever reason?

How can good men and women be expected to enter public life if they cannot be safe?

NEAL RUBIN IN 2024 The political fury factory keeps churning – and we keep buying

THERE WILL BE those inevitable questions that became so familiar in the 1960s.

Who is the would-be killer, and why did he do it?

Was the president properly protected? How did a gunman get so close that he was able to fire a half-dozen shots?

Can any president be protected anymore?

How did the machinery of the government where lines of authority in times of crisis have been a matter of concern, even in the last week respond under pressure?

Why was the public misled by the White House staff in the first hour after the shooting, being told that President Reagan had not been hit?

AND IT IS inevitable that the national dispute over handguns will once again be raised. Does the easy availability of guns contribute to our national anguish?

In a way, these will be the easier questions. Some of them may even be answerable.

Perhaps the most difficult question to answer is what we are coming to.

It is a bleak prospect indeed if we are destined all our lives to witness these periodic televised scenes of horror, with screaming ambulances and police cars.

Some historians have said we are a nation bred to violence, with a tradition of violence. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated only a few miles from where Ronald Reagan was shot.

But it also is true that we have seen more attempts to kill presidents in our times than this nation had seen for generations.

President Reagan opened his inaugural address a little more than two months ago with the observation that "the orderly transfer of authority" in America, that "we accept as normal, is nothing less than a miracle" to many in the world. "Few of us stop to think," he said, "how unique we really are."

But there is nothing orderly about an attempted murder. This has become a recurring national nightmare, and it will be a great challenge to the American people to see if they can learn how to make it go away.

The Point Conversations and insights about the moment.

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Katherine Miller

Opinion Writer and Editor, reporting from Radford, Va.

JD Vance Is Still Figuring Out How to Attack Kamala Harris

Past the shock and emotion of the last few weeks, this is really one of the weirder times in pure electoral politics — who’s winning, who’s losing — that I can remember. Who are the candidates? How will they talk about one another? How will the things that have happened this month change people’s minds and votes?

On Monday night, at one of JD Vance’s first rallies as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, I watched him mention that his wife had told him the day before that President Biden had withdrawn from the race. The crowd let out the equivalent of a big whistle inside a small, bright arena.

“You’re excited,” he said. “I was looking forward to debating Kamala Harris.”

We were in Southwest Virginia, at Radford University, on a warm, breezy summer evening, with the mountains looking especially blue-green. I watched Donald Trump campaign in Virginia last month, too, near Norfolk and the beach, the day after his debate with Biden. Is Virginia competitive? Was it competitive before Biden dropped out, but now maybe not?

For months the Trump campaign has talked a bit about expanding its electoral map to include states like Virginia, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Minnesota. Some polling in Virginia in particular has pointed that way — but perhaps that was a function of Biden, or the changes in the race will change how people view it in different places.

In the audience, people wore T-shirts with “Fight, Fight, Fight” written on the back. In a subtly disquieting kind of announcement before the speeches, a man pointed out the emergency exits to the crowd.

Onstage, Vance tried out different lines of attack against Harris, including that she’d helped cover up problems with Biden’s age; that she was too extreme (with various lines of attack coming more from her 2020 presidential primary campaign than her role in the Biden administration); that she owned the problems at the border. Trump is a threat to democracy? Actually, he said, it’s the Democrats pushing Biden off the ballot that’s the real threat.

Presumably, he and the campaign will figure out how they want to talk about Harris as time goes on — Monday was day one — in the same way that people don’t yet have a good sense of what messages and policies Harris will emphasize most, or who her running mate will be, or what line of criticism they’ll lead with against Trump and Vance.

The picture of what this year’s election will eventually look like remains very fluid and unformed at the moment.

Editorial Board Member

The Secret Service Is Becoming a Symbol of Incompetence

Update: Kimberly Cheatle resigned as Secret Service director on Tuesday morning.

After Kimberly Cheatle’s insultingly evasive congressional testimony on Monday — though even she acknowledged the colossal failure of the agency she leads, the United States Secret Service, to deter the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump — it seems likely that we’re seeing the final hours of her tenure as director.

One would have to dig meticulously through hours of testimony to find a straight answer she offered to any question. Nine days after the shooting, she could not explain why no officer or agent had been on the roof from which the gunman fired. She could not say why that building was not in the agency’s security perimeter. She could not explain why her spokesman, as well as her boss, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, denied that Trump aides had urgently requested more protection.

The frustration with her was bipartisan. She couldn’t even answer repeated attempts by Representative Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat, to say whether the prevalence of guns had made her job more difficult — something most police chiefs would agree with.

In the end, even the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who prosecuted Trump’s second impeachment trial, called for her resignation.

With the probable demise of Cheatle’s career, the Secret Service may become a potent symbol of general incompetence in Washington.

The value Democrats and Republicans tend to place on the federal bureaucracy has been an essential dividing line between the two camps, even before Ronald Reagan’s inaugural incantation that “ government is the problem .”

Despite the devotion millions of Americans feel toward Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start and Obamacare, and despite the benefits of President Biden’s infrastructure deal, the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act, the federal ogre has been a potent motivator for Republican campaigns.

Biden supposedly doesn’t like to fire people. (Perhaps as counterprogramming to the guy who got famous for saying “You’re fired!”) But after the fiasco of the withdrawal from Kabul, Afghanistan, led to few repercussions, after months of a seemingly uncontrolled flow of migrants over the border, after concerns about inflation were pooh-poohed — and with promised investments in infrastructure only recently starting to be realized — questions were already being asked about overall government competence and accountability.

Almost a decade ago, a bipartisan report described the Secret Service as an agency in crisis. That so little seems to have been done to improve it — that a bureaucrat like Cheatle is still in office — will give many Americans even less reason to have faith in the government.

Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist

Kamala Harris and the Political Power of Joy

After months of alternating between despair and terror, a lot of Democrats are feeling positively unburdened. In the day since President Biden stepped aside and the party coalesced behind Vice President Kamala Harris, a euphoric giddiness has fallen over the party.

You can see it in the donations: The Democratic small-dollar donor platform ActBlue has raised about $100 million in the last 24 hours, and the super PAC Future Forward has received $150 million in new commitments. And you can see it in the proliferation of silly TikTok memes, in the homemade merch and in the celebrities like Charli XCX and Ariana Grande getting on board. Suddenly, a campaign that felt like a bleak death march has become fun, even exuberant.

Intuitively, it seems like the newly effervescent vibes should help in the very serious project of defeating Donald Trump, but I’ve been curious if the political science literature backs that up. There doesn’t seem to be a ton of academic research about the role of excitement in presidential politics, perhaps because it’s hard to quantify.

“I don’t know of any political science or economic forecasting models that explicitly include a measure of voter enthusiasm,” the political scientist Alan Abramowitz told me. But the scholar Samuel Popkin, whose books include “The Candidate: What It Takes to Win — and Hold — the White House,” said that intangibles like joy and passion can matter a lot.

When people really like their candidate, he said, politics are “less of a chore, and you’re going to do things like wear the T-shirt.” Signals like T-shirts and yard signs , in turn, send a message that being part of a campaign is socially desirable.

In politics as in life, zeal is contagious.

Lydia Polgreen

Every Running Mate Is a Diversity Pick

Over the weekend I wrote about the way diversity, equity and inclusion have redounded to the benefit of JD Vance, saying he as much as anyone could be called a D.E.I. candidate, even though the term, intended as a negative, has only been applied to Kamala Harris, who is Black.

Several readers wrote in to quibble with my argument by saying that Harris, unlike Vance, was explicitly chosen as vice president because of her race and gender, and therefore she was quite literally a D.E.I. candidate.

I did not include this in my column because to me it seemed too obvious, but given how many people have made this point it is worth saying: On a two-person presidential ticket, the running mate is always a diversity pick. Modern running mates are chosen to balance a ticket, and identity is a huge part of that balance.

John F. Kennedy (reluctantly) chose Lyndon B. Johnson as a way to shore up his weaknesses in the South. Ronald Reagan chose a patrician scion of the Northeastern elite to balance out his Western image. Barack Obama chose Joe Biden at least in part for his age and experience. Donald Trump chose Mike Pence for his appeal to religious conservatives. Each brought needed diversity to the ticket, and each had strengths and weaknesses.

Even Vance is a diversity pick — a youthful counter to a 78-year-old presidential candidate. He may be ideologically similar to Trump, but he comes from a very different background — Midwestern and working class, quite a contrast to Trump, the born-rich son of a New York City real estate magnate.

One could quibble about how qualified each of these men was for the job, but the fact that their identities were part of why they got the nod does not diminish their legitimacy as running mates. It is telling that only in the case of a Black woman running mate does this effort to diversify the ticket get such outsize attention. Which, in the end, was the point I was trying to make in my column: There are many kinds of diversity and lots of forms of affirmative action, some of them baked right into our Constitution . Maybe we should be a little more vocal and honest with ourselves about that.

Jonathan Alter

Contributing Opinion Writer

The Weak Republican Response to Kamala Harris

Michael Whatley, a co-chair of the Republican National Committee, said Sunday night on Fox News that “the Democrats are in free fall.” They were falling, all right, into $50 million overnight from small donors that left any of Donald Trump’s one-day cash hauls in the dust.

This was just one sign of the Republican Party’s ham-handed response to President Biden’s decision to stand down, making Vice President Kamala Harris the presumptive Democratic nominee.

The House speaker, Mike Johnson, called on President Biden to resign. Set aside the fact that this was a tad self-serving: Under the Constitution, the speaker would then be next in line to the presidency. It’s also a weak gambit and reflects the Republicans’ insecurity about how to take on Harris. That’s all they got?

To bolster their demand, Johnson and other Republicans are using identical talking points that allege a White House “cover-up” of the president’s true medical condition.

It’s true that Biden’s aides did not want anyone to know just how weak a candidate he would have been against Trump. But Biden as candidate is a different matter from Biden as president.

Any Republican alleging a cover-up should be asked how he or she would have done in the hourlong news conference last week following the Group of 7 summit. The only honest answer: Not as well as Biden. Yes, Biden wasn’t good enough to resurrect his campaign and prove that he was up to being president in 2027 or 2028. But his knowledgeable geo-strategic tour of the foreign policy horizon proved beyond any doubt that he has the mental acuity to be president now.

Republicans apparently don’t have the good sense to stop talking about age. Fellas, the orthopedic shoe is now on the other foot, and now it’s Trump who looks decrepit compared with Harris. Having obsessed over Biden’s age for the past month, the press will now jump on every Trump flub, and they will have lots of them to choose from.

Trump plans to hide behind a sycophantic doctor, Representative Ronny Jackson, but it won’t work. Four years ago this month, he took a cognition test (“Person, woman, man, camera, TV”). As any gerontologist will confirm, it’s time for another one. Let the drumbeat begin.

Of course it won’t be long before Trump tries to deflect the age issue with his usual ugliness, which will include playing the race card against Harris. But don’t assume that will work to Trump’s advantage. More likely, it will hurt him among suburban women swing voters. They may not be vegetarians, but they don’t much care for rancid red meat.

Republicans plan to go after Harris hard on immigration. That’s a good issue for them, but it also opens Trump up to a potent counterattack. Expect to see Harris and her surrogates name-check Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma a hundred times between now and the election. He’s the very conservative Republican who worked with Democrats to fashion a tough immigration bill. Unlike Biden, Harris has the prosecutorial chops to make Trump pay a price for blowing up that solution for crass political reasons.

Prosecutor versus felon. I like that matchup.

Patrick Healy

Deputy Opinion Editor

The Most Urgent Question Facing Harris Isn’t About Trump

Every Monday morning on The Point, we kick off the week with a tipsheet on the latest in the presidential campaign. Here’s what we’re looking at this week:

President Biden’s historic exit from the 2024 race demands that Democrats get this critical and urgent opportunity right. The party has to find the strongest possible candidate to defeat Donald Trump, and it has to do so with gutsy, go-get-em, anything-is-possible thinking.

Trump is beatable in November: beatable by a bold candidate with the smarts and political talent to excite people with a vision of America and to persuade more voters that Trump is unfit for the presidency because of his failed leadership , habitual lying, cognitive and temperamental deficiencies and hostility to the American way of life (the rule of law, democracy, liberty, fair play, you name it).

This week will reveal much about “anything is possible” confidence in Democratic politics. Just because Kamala Harris is the vice president doesn’t mean, automatically, she is the strongest possible candidate against Trump. She may be — but she needs to prove that, because many Americans remember only her middling presidential campaign in 2019 and her low-profile, mixed-at-best record as vice president. To her great credit, Harris says she wants to “earn” the nomination before the Democratic National Convention begins just four weeks from today. A big question hanging over this week: What does Harris mean by “earn”?

Harris spent Sunday making calls to party leaders and donors — sensible Day 1 moves. And she starts with a foundation: She spent the past year building ties with officials and power brokers in key states and having off-the-record meals with journalists. And she acquitted herself well over the past three weeks under scrutiny as Biden was on the ropes. To win the nomination, Harris has to win over only Democratic convention delegates — but if she can’t start persuading voters to rally to her side, or if she proves wobbly, we may see the Obama-Pelosi-Schumer-congressional wing of the party start getting nervous again.

The best thing for Harris and for Democrats, history suggests, is competition — a mini-primary to get voters engaged and excited, and to get the nominee in fighting form. I saw up close how Hillary Clinton’s formidable candidacy made Barack Obama a stronger candidate in 2008 and how Bernie Sanders did much the same for Clinton in 2016 and for Biden in 2020. Better to excite and inspire voters by welcoming all comers for debates of ideas first, and then focus on Trump at the convention and afterward. Voters have to want you, at some point.

A lot of signs suggest the appetite for a competition isn’t there. Instead of confidence, there is fear of chaos if there is a contested convention. Maybe there’s too much anxiety about damaging Harris over “Bidenomics” or the war in Gaza or the southern border, or disrespecting her by challenging her. I get it.

But better for Harris if the nomination is hers to win instead of hers to lose. And to become that bold candidate, to lead a confident party, Harris is best off appealing to voters by competing against rivals and proving her mettle. That’s the gutsy, American way — something Harris and Democrats know, and Donald Trump fears.

Tressie McMillan Cottom

Kamala Harris or Bust

President Biden’s decision to withdraw was probably a foregone conclusion a week ago.

Major donors and trusted advisers had made their preference known. So had many members of the House and the Senate. These are people whose political identity was formed in the same political context as Biden’s. They believe that the system works. They believe that dedicated public servants supersede mercurial electoral politics. Whether you agree with their assessment of politics, this nation needed an institutionalist in 2020. Biden was the most institutional candidate.

This election is a referendum on the kind of politics that made Biden: Can the system still be trusted to work?

That is a question about the future, not the past. Ultimately, neither Donald Trump nor Biden represents the future. In Trump’s case, he is a stopgap for a clearly articulated Republican strategy to rework American institutions — in some ways, by destroying those institutions. In Biden’s case, he does not look like a candidate who could counter the threats Trump and the Republicans pose to this country.

Vice President Kamala Harris is the only choice to replace him. That now makes her the leader of the Democrats’ future. The Democratic National Convention is not the time to litigate her ability to take over for Biden. The time to do that was in 2020.

This election is not a competition between two equally matched candidates with merely competing visions for America. It is a race between a man who intends to be king and the party that stands in his way. The only conversation Democrats should be having with voters at this point is that a second Trump presidency would remake this country as we know it.

Nicholas Kristof

What Biden’s Decision Not to Run Means for America

In an instant, President Biden has reshaped America.

By bowing out of the presidential race, he appears to have increased the odds that Democrats can hold onto the White House and compete strongly for control of Congress. He may have set in motion a historic process that could result in a woman becoming the most important person in the world, a step that would reshape gender norms worldwide.

Biden’s act of political self-sacrifice caps an extraordinary career of public service, including a presidency more productive than others, even some that lasted twice as long. Biden’s announcement also offers a stark contrast between his devotion to the national interest and Donald Trump’s long focus on his own personal interest.

I suspect that Biden’s withdrawal may also nurture another norm: one against aging leaders, following the preference of many voters in polls. Perhaps Biden is fostering a principle that aging presidents should not seek a second term.

Biden’s decision also marks a generational transition in American politics. In his 1961 inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy celebrated the torch being passed to the greatest generation. Then, in 1993, President Bill Clinton claimed power for baby boomers, who have since held it for more than three decades. Once more the torch will be passed to a new generation of Americans.

Presidents are most important for the way they influence vast and distant stretches of America and the world, places that denizens of Washington, D.C., may never have heard of. The most momentous presidencies — such as those in the last century of Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan or Lyndon Johnson — were significant primarily for what unfolded on foreign battlefields and on main streets around America. The history that they unspooled was written in places like the Dust Bowl or in the Jim Crow South.

Biden’s presidency already has reshaped towns across America with everything from broadband to insulin price caps to a (unfortunately temporary) refundable child tax credit that helped reduce child poverty by half . All that is an immense legacy.

With the announcement that he is withdrawing from the race, Biden builds on that legacy — and once more it is less about Washington than about the difference his choice not to run again will make around the country and the world. My guess is that because a Democrat is now more likely to win the White House, Russia is less likely to defeat Ukraine and China is less likely to go to war with Taiwan. Women are more likely to be able to get a legal abortion. The Education Department is more likely to survive and so, for that matter, is a healthy American democracy.

Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him. I would prefer to see a competition to choose as nominee the person most likely to beat Trump, but Democrats will have to sort that out.

What is clear is that Joe Biden had a productive term in office and should be proud of his accomplishments. But without diminishing those achievements, historians may look back in their assessments of Biden’s presidency and paraphrase what Shakespeare wrote in “Macbeth”: Nothing became his presidency like the leaving of it.

The Scale and Scope of Biden’s Sacrifice

Joe Biden just put country first.

There’s nothing truer to say about the president’s historic announcement on Sunday that he is ending his bid for a second term. He put the stakes in this election, and the threat posed by Donald Trump to America, ahead of himself. Giving up a re-election bid voluntarily has rarely happened in the history of the United States. And it is something Biden was clearly reluctant to do.

But we are at a dangerous moment in the history of our country. Trump fails tests of leadership, character, moral fitness and more, and he embodies the worst strains of narcissism, grievance and selfishness in humanity. It is a measure of America’s misbegotten politics that Trump leveraged the support of a small and noisy faction of conservative voters to take control of the Republican Party and become its nominee for a third time, as presidents for life do in authoritarian dictatorships.

What Biden just did was incredibly hard. He is a successful president and a victor over Trump in their last head-to-head election, not to mention someone who has been underestimated repeatedly throughout his life. He also believes deeply in himself, when many others did not. It can be very difficult for someone who has lived so long and fought so hard to accept the pleas of others who have never walked in his shoes.

He has given up a chance to continue making the lives of people better, which has always mattered to Biden. That’s sacrifice. Sacrifice to help the Democratic Party stop Trump at the ballot box. Sacrifice to help Democratic Senate and House candidates have a better chance to win election in November. And sacrifice to ensure that the presidency is held by someone with the cognitive and physical abilities to do the job at the level that Americans demand.

There will be those who say that he is getting out while the getting’s good — that he had no choice as his party abandoned him. Maybe that’s true. But none of us know if Biden would have lost or won in November. Biden himself doesn’t know. And yet he knew that the stakes for the country were too high to go ahead and gamble the election on his age and cognitive abilities. America thinks of itself as a young country; even those of us who are older think of ourselves as young. But we all face a ticking clock, our minds and bodies changing for the worse. Biden looked that in the face, in ways that many of us are afraid to, and before millions of people he bowed to mortality. That in itself is historic.

Joe Biden just put country first. What an extraordinary moment in American history.

Binyamin Appelbaum

The Lesson of the Trump Coronation

The Republican convention that concluded early Friday was a four-day celebration of the cult of Donald Trump. Night after night, disciples and flatterers portrayed America as a nation in decline and Trump as its savior. But the real focus wasn’t on making America great again. It was on making Trump president again.

To prevent that outcome, Democrats must stage a different kind of convention. They need to focus on the needs of the American people. They have to present a plan for getting to a better place. And most important, they cannot spend four days in Chicago celebrating President Biden. To win, they must nominate a better candidate.

Biden has spent the weeks since his revelatory disaster on the debate stage denying the reality of his limitations. But his attempts at redemption have only served to confirm his decline. The substance of his speeches no longer matters. Everyone is watching to see if he stumbles — or rather, how frequently.

Many Americans have deeply personal experience of watching relatives fade. They know what they are seeing. They know what comes next. And while it is sad to watch a man no longer able to do the things he did so ably for so long, it would be tragic to let him persist in the attempt.

The votes cast in favor of Biden in the party’s state primaries are not an irreversible judgment. As the facts have changed, so have the views of voters. In an A.P. poll released last week, 65 percent of Democrats said they wanted Biden to withdraw from the race — a devastating vote of no confidence.

The president has said he’d leave the race “if the Lord Almighty came down” and told him to go. He said he’d leave if he was convinced that he had no chance of winning. He said he’d leave the race if a “medical condition” emerged.

He ought to leave because the voters he purports to represent do not want him to run.

There can be no certainty that a different Democratic candidate would win more votes in November. But that candidate would be able to fight harder and do the things Biden no longer can: spend long days on the trail, engage the public and the press, debate Trump.

And the choice of a different candidate would demonstrate that the Democratic Party is listening to voters. That is what a party is supposed to do.

If, on the other hand, Biden and his party persist on their present course, they risk more than the loss of the White House and Congress in November. They risk a lasting loss of trust in the party’s commitment to serving the public interest.

Farah Stockman

Biden’s Successful Border Policy Is a Mixed Blessing

Democrats who have been curled up in a fetal position this month may finally have a glimmer of good news: Migrant crossings at the southern border have declined sharply since President Biden curbed asylum in June.

You wouldn’t be able to tell from the speeches at the Republican National Convention, which hammered away at Biden’s “open border” policies, but illegal crossings fell from 117,000 in May to 83,000 in June, the lowest monthly total since Biden took office, according to my colleagues in the newsroom . The number of new immigration court cases also dropped dramatically since December — a high point — from 264,049 to 100,909 in June, according to TRAC, a nonpartisan, nonprofit data research center affiliated with Syracuse University.

In other words, the policy is finally working. But even that is a mixed blessing for Democrats. It stands as proof that Biden could have done more at the border a long time ago, had his White House agreed that the migrant crisis was indeed a crisis sooner. (Some Biden people clearly did not .)

It turns out that making it easy to file an asylum claim — and waiting for years to rule on those claims — turns the asylum system into a work-permit magnet that drags people from all over the world through the Darién Gap .

But nobody can really be surprised by this.

In 2021, I interviewed Brandon Judd, who was then the president of the National Border Patrol Council, a labor union, about whether he had any practical recommendations for bringing down the superhigh numbers at the border. He told me that he had recommended to the Biden administration that would-be asylum seekers be held in “least restrictive” state-run facilities until their cases were reviewed. If the administration did that, he said, the numbers of asylum seekers would plummet, since many are crossing in order to make money in the United States, not to escape from persecution.

“History clearly shows when we release large numbers of people pending court hearings, more people cross our borders illegally,” he said.

I have thought about that interview quite a bit since, especially on the day that Biden essentially curbed asylum at the border.

“The simple truth is there is a worldwide migrant crisis, and if the United States doesn’t secure our border, there is no limit to the number of people who may try to come here,” Biden said at the time. That might have been awkward to admit in 2021. But it was still obvious to those who were paying attention.

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Inaugural Address (1961)

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Source: John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961. Available at https://goo.gl/tYv9zJ .

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John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, 1961 Essay

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