Tag: Henry Clay

Imperfect Solutions, Imperfect Men—Revisiting JFK’s Profiles In Courage

Posted on by Michael Liss

by Michael Liss

We are now on opposite sides of the moral universe. —Joseph Buckingham, journalist and Massachusetts State Senator, speaking of his once esteemed friend, Daniel Webster.

Daniel Webster, by George Peter Alexander Healy, 1846. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

What a wonderful quote. Thirty years of amicable relations destroyed in the course of a three-hour speech. March 7, 1850. Senator Daniel Webster taking his leave of old friends and older ideals as he seeks the higher ground of political peacemaking. 

Webster’s story is one of eight Senators’ featured in John F. Kennedy’s 1956 Pulitzer Prize winning book Profiles In Courage. This is as good a time as any to acknowledge what everyone knows: The book is the story of political integrity, but JFK really didn’t author most of it. The bulk of the research and writing was done by his long-time speechwriter Theodore Sorensen. Let’s also acknowledge that JFK’s dad, Joseph P. Kennedy, might have “assisted” in nailing down the prestigious award.  

Such is politics, and such is the process of image creation and image burnishing. Profiles In Courage was the end product of a JFK idea inspired by the actions of then-Senator John Quincy Adams, who, in 1807, opposed his Federalist Party’s foreign policy and was denied renomination as a result. Kennedy took the story to Sorensen, asked him to do further research, and Profiles is the result. 

The book serves a real political purpose. The Kennedys (father and son) have their eyes on the future and don’t have a lot of time to waste. JFK was under 30 when he was elected to the House in 1946; 35 when elected Senator in 1952. He’s 39 in 1956, surely old enough to set his sights higher. JFK has a great political name, charisma to burn, and even a personal history of physical courage (PT-109), but, still, at that age, the resume is clearly incomplete. A book, especially a well-received one that shows some  gravitas, might lead to a VP slot on the 1956 ticket with presumptive nominee Adlai Stevenson. A man could dream and a man could plan, and Profiles was part of the plan. 

Is it worth a Pulitzer, Dad intervention or not? Read more »



Monday, May 25, 2020

Liberty and Disunion

Posted on by Michael Liss

by Michael Liss

There is a statue of Daniel Webster in Central Park. It is tucked in at the intersection of West and Bethesda Drives, massive and unmoving, implacable and forbidding. Despite its size, it goes largely unnoticed, except as a meeting point.

Just a few hundred feet to the west of Webster is The Dakota, where John Lennon lived and died, and Strawberry Fields, a small memorial inside the Park dedicated to Lennon’s memory. In non-viral times, buses line up near The Dakota, and platoons of tourists pause there for pictures, then walk to Strawberry Fields, then across to Bethesda Fountain. If you happen to be jogging, they will wait until you pass, many with bemused looks at the strange beings who inhabit this odd corner of the universe. Occasionally, a guided tour will take brief note of Webster, but most move on. Such is fame. 

It wasn’t always this way. There was a time when Daniel Webster was seen as a giant, one of the foremost statesmen of the first half of the 19th Century. He, along with Kentucky’s Henry Clay and South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun, were known as the Great Triumvirate of the Senate. All three also served as Secretary of State; all three ached for the Presidency and never quite got there; all three were antagonists, rivals, and sometimes collaborators. Clay was the Great Compromiser. Of Calhoun, the historian Richard Hofstadter said he was “probably the last American statesman to do any primary political thinking.” Webster was an orator so esteemed that Stephen Vincent Benét had him besting the Devil himself.  

These qualities all came together in one of the most fascinating and consequential debates in our history, South Carolina’s drive for Nullification, and, eventually, its assertion that it had the right to leave the Union. William F. Freehling called it a “Prelude to Civil War” (in a book of the same title) and, in its issues and its sectional animosities, one can see why. It certainly had high drama—florid speeches, torchlight parades, marching and mass rallies, dueling, armed militias drilling, and the glowering presence of the biggest personality of all, Andrew Jackson. Read more »