Caffeinated Politics

The repulsive feelings we have for what is happening to our nation, and our utter disgust with those who allowed this to happen in 2024, go without my needing to write it here. It also goes without my needing to write that Donald Trump’s supporters were likely never aware of President-elect John F. Kennedy’s City Upon A Hill speech, which was given on this day in 1961. Or the lessons his words imparted to our country.

Given how our nation this past year has been lowered in the eyes of our fellow citizens and those viewing us from abroad, we recall the era of John Kennedy, who embodied the image of a leader whose intellect, eloquence, and grasp of history elevated the presidency into a forum for ideas and progress. I look at that era with nostalgic envy. His speeches revealed a mind steeped in literature, philosophy, and policy, capable of inspiring a nation to look beyond its immediate struggles toward a shared vision of civic duty and global responsibility. When did we hear even a scintilla of that over the past year?

Kennedy’s cerebral approach was not just a rhetorical flourish. One of the points I stress when talking about the man is that he was deeply and continuously curious about a wide range of topics. When in government, he matched that desire for more information with a demand and deep respect for expertise in the areas where he needed to make sound judgments. When did we witness even a scintilla of that over the past year?

During his short presidency, the White House was a place where education, thoughtfulness, and moral imagination were marshalled to shape the destiny of a nation. That is never a line that could be used in Donald Trump’s White House.

Trump is the very embodiment of the antithesis of President Kennedy’s tradition. Trump is absolutely authoritarian in instinct, completely incurious in intellect, and proven to be corrupt in practice. We have witnessed daily–hourly–his disdain for the pursuit of knowledge and how he relishes the elevation of lies and smears, and the destruction of institutions and civic norms.

Where Kennedy sought to inspire unity through reason and vision, Trump has continuously leaned on division, gross spectacle, and grifting self-interest for money-making schemes. As I study history and think about the words central to this post from Kennedy in 1961, I am struck by how Kennedy treated the Oval Office as a solemn trust, whereas Trump uses it as a blunt instrument for personal gain and authoritarian measures.

With that perspective, I post a segment of JFK’s famed City Upon A Hill speech.

For of those to whom much is given, much is required. And when at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment on each one of us — recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state — our success or failure, in whatever office we may hold, will be measured by the answers to four questions:

First, were we truly men of courage — with the courage to stand up to one’s enemies — and the courage to stand up, when necessary, to one’s associates — the courage to resist public pressure, as well as private greed?

Secondly, were we truly men of judgment — with perceptive judgment of the future as well as the past — of our own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others — with enough wisdom to know that we did not know, and enough candor to admit it?

Third, were we truly men of integrity — men who never ran out on either the principles in which they believed or the people who believed in them — men who believed in us — men whom neither financial gain nor political ambition could ever divert from the fulfillment of our sacred trust?

Finally, were we truly men of dedication — with an honor mortgaged to no single individual or group, and compromised by no private obligation or aim, but devoted solely to serving the public good and the national interest.