John F. Kennedy and the Liberal Persuasion

John F. Kennedy looms large in the public imagination and has long captured the interest of rhetorical critics and scholars of the U.S. presidency. In this deeply researched and elegantly written book, John M. Murphy situates Kennedy’s public address within its historical, political, economic, social, and cultural contexts to explain why. In the book’s preface, Murphy offers a compelling rationale for what he terms “rhetorical readings” of history—and, in particular, the rhetoric of John F. Kennedy (xiii). Murphy rejects a division between “text and context, foreground and background” and instead argues for reading each rhetorical act as an “intertextual matrix” that “flows from and into others, while maintaining its integrity as a particular address at a specific moment” (xviii). From the outset, then, this methodological approach invites the reader to understand John F. Kennedy’s rhetoric as a reflection of history and a response to his allies, critics, and adversaries. What emerges is a rhetorical portrait of the thirty-fifth president of the United States and the times in which he lived, a picture that itself performs Murphy’s call to examine well-known public performances on the rhetorical stage as a both a product and producer of their contexts.In the book’s opening chapter, Murphy establishes the philosophical, historical, and political context out of which John F. Kennedy’s “liberal presidency” emerged (1). To do so, he traces the intellectual roots of liberalism in the United States and details how a “more democratic mode of presidential rhetoric emerged as a means to articulate a liberal agenda and hold presidents to those priorities” (3). This dual focus on the rise of liberalism and the evolution of the institution of the presidency sets the historical backdrop for both Kennedy’s rise to political prominence and book’s successive chapters. One of the most interesting parts of this chapter is Murphy’s refutation of the often cited and hotly debated rhetorical presidency thesis, the idea that direct presidential speech undermined constitutionally-mandated workings between the executive and legislative branches and, in so doing, fundamentally altered the institution of the presidency (14-28). Instead, Murphy makes a compelling case that rhetoric is not separate from the presidency, but instead plays a fundamental role in its constitution and character. To do this, he develops four elements he sees as fundamental to the presidency’s institutional structure: (1) its legal/administrative powers; (2) its performative dimensions, or how the presidency is enacted by those who inhabit the office; (3) its agency or ability “to act in a way that is meaningful to others”; and (4) its “external environmental factors,” or the context in which it operates (23-28). Together, these four institutional facets underscore the crucial role rhetoric plays in presidential rhetoric and political deliberation. “At its best, rhetoric offers languages of engagement amid civic friendship,” writes Murphy. “That legitimates the ensuing policies and judgements, and they, in turn, reflect back to and constitute the institutions that so speak” (27). As Murphy deftly shows, presidential rhetoric is not an aberration or deviation from constitutional norms. Instead, it lies at the very heart of the institution of the presidency.Over the next five chapters, Murphy examines what he calls Kennedy’s “greatest hits,” speeches that illuminate how JFK deployed rhetoric “as a practical tool that secures political success and a creative force that crafts a liberal persuasion” (xviii). But to conceptualize these content chapters as rhetorical analyses of individual speech texts is to miss Murphy’s critical acumen and historical depth. Although each focuses on a particular rhetorical moment in Kennedy’s presidency, collectively these chapters offer a richly-textured narrative of how JFK enacted and embodied the presidency over his one thousand days. In chapter two, Murphy analyzes JFK’s Inaugural Address as “perhaps the purest expression of the possibilities and problems of mid-century American liberalism,” thus establishing the immediate context for the events in the chapters to come (41). In this chapter Murphy also offers a reading of then-Senator Kennedy’s oratory during the 1960 presidential campaign, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Farewell Address,” and Kennedy’s own final speech to the Massachusetts state legislature as president-elect, moments that shaped the rhetorical and political context of January 20, 1961. Chapter three focuses on how JFK deployed a “scientific ethos” in his June 11, 1962, commencement address at Yale University to position himself as a key arbiter of U.S. fiscal and economic policy (76). Here, Murphy demonstrates how Kennedy drew on “traditional liberal concerns and the popular iteration of pragmatism” to embody “a scientific habit of mind” (113). In so doing, the president “modeled the way of thinking he sought from the audience,” inviting them to think and reason with him (114). Chapter four recounts Kennedy’s response to the Cuban Missile Crisis in the fall of 1962. Focusing specifically on the president’s televised address to the nation on October 22, Murphy traces how JFK skillfully managed the emotions of his audience by establishing a virtual “courtroom drama” against the Soviets and built gradual support for a “quarantine” of the island through a judicial rhetorical style (122). In chapter five, Murphy details the Cold War context behind two of Kennedy’s most celebrated addresses: his American University Commencement Address on June 10, 1963 and his “Ich bin ein Berliner” declaration at the Rudolph Wilde Platz in West Berlin on June 26, 1963. Through his careful reading of both iconic texts, Murphy demonstrates how rhetorical strategies such as reciprocity, synecdoche, dissociation, phantasia, and transcendence “linguistically embodied the dynamic order [Kennedy] sought in the world” (155). Chapter six begins with a plain assessment of JFK’s civil rights legacy: “The fluidity that came to characterize John Kennedy’s language on foreign affairs took too long to reach civil rights” (207). In this final content chapter, Murphy draws on prominent voices from the historical moment including James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., proponents of white supremacy, and even former president Dwight D. Eisenhower to reconstruct the prevailing themes characterizing 1960s U.S. racial consciousness. It is against this detailed historical backdrop that Murphy analyzes Kennedy’s June 11, 1963, address to the nation on civil rights, arguing that Kennedy ultimately “forged an unbreakable bond between the black freedom movement and his presidential body,” a connection that “irrevocably committed the institution to that same cause” (270).John F. Kennedy and the Liberal Persuasion is an exemplar of rhetorical history. Each individual chapter provides a nuanced, well-sourced contextual account of a particular facet of Kennedy’s public speech. These case studies can be read as standalone pieces of rhetorical criticism and would make an excellent addition to undergraduate or graduate syllabi on presidential rhetoric, the Cold War, and/or U.S. public address. As a whole, the work illuminates just how important doing rhetorical history is, what it requires, and what it should look like. Through its integration of expansive historical research and close textual criticism, this book serves as a model for future studies of public address and deserves the attention of anyone interested in historiography as a critical method. Ultimately, this book invites our critical reflection as to whether the hallmarks of JFK’s rhetoric—virtues such as reciprocity, mutual respect, and democratic participation—still have the power to capture the public’s imagination and, if so, how future U.S. presidents might translate John F. Kennedy’s liberal persuasion for the twenty-first century

Aesthetics · Linguistics · Persuasion · Political science · Sociology · Philosophy · Rhetoric and Communication Studies