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CHAPTER 1
The Liberal Presidency
However progressive his program, John Kennedy had a fraught relationship with the liberal establishment. Nowhere was that clearer than in his dealings with New York's Liberal Party. Founded in 1944 as an alternative to the two major parties, it shared membership and leadership with the liberal national interest group Americans for Democratic Action. These activists did not embrace his candidacy. His famous father was an anti-Semitic isolationist; JFK seemed more interested in power than principle; he voted for a crippling amendment to the 1957 Civil Rights Act; he crushed liberal hero Adlai Stevenson at the 1960 convention; he selected Texan Lyndon Johnson as his running mate. Worst, he had failed to condemn Senator Joe McCarthy's witch hunt nor did he vote for McCarthy's censure, a litmus test for liberals. The Liberal Party did not endorse him with any enthusiasm, nor did many activists around the country feel good about him. His September 14, 1960, acceptance address to an audience of luminaries including Adlai Stevenson and Reinhold Niebuhr mattered more than the usual state party appearance.
The candidate delivered a rousing speech that not only cemented his liberal support, but also defined his political faith. After the appropriate greetings and pointed humor at Republican expense, Kennedy announced, "I'm proud to say I'm a 'Liberal.'" Two days after his landmark Houston address, in which he "set forth my views ... on the proper relationship between church and state," he turned here to "the proper relationship between the state and the citizen." To show that both carried the same weight, he framed each as a statement of faith. "This," he announced, "is my political credo." In a rhythmic parallel structure, he said: "I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, and the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and ideas. It is, I believe, this faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith." Yet if liberals made but "an announcement of virtuous ends," their creed would matter little. They must pursue these goals "with social invention, political skill, and executive vigor." The last mattered to candidate Kennedy, yet he noted leadership was not the only factor: "Our liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins." Immigrants had usually become liberals, he argued, "generations of men and women who fled from the despotism of the czars, the horrors of the Nazis, the tyranny of hunger, who came here to the new frontier in the state of New York." They were, he insisted, "a living cross section of American history," the "pioneers and builders of the American labor movement." They had brought forth leaders like "Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson." The nation, Kennedy suggested, required that sort of liberal executive "vigah" once more.
The links between the liberal faith, presidential power, and a diverse people lie at the heart of mid-century American politics. JFK's belief that executive vigor enabled liberty for all might astonish some liberal forebears, but it flowed logically from his era's freedom movements. During the twentieth century, an increasingly diverse electorate demanded presidential accountability while enhancing presidential power in an effort to make real the promise of human dignity. This chapter explores that evolution. To do so, I first outline the rhetorical lineaments of the liberal persuasion, taking particular note of its core appeal, the reciprocity argument. I turn then to the presidency's institutional evolution, arguing that a more democratic mode of presidential rhetoric emerged as a means to articulate a liberal agenda and hold presidents to those priorities. Both the liberal persuasion and the presidency it made possible enabled and constrained John Kennedy's rhetoric and merit examination. I conclude with his rhetorical education, the ways that he came to understand these elements in public life.
The Liberal Tradition
Like the other isms circulating in contemporary life, liberalism is an essentially contested concept, one whose definition provokes controversy but whose use seems necessary to intelligent public argument. I begin with the belief that liberalism is a situated and thick political language or mode of persuasion that has evolved over time in dialogue with other aspects of the modern world. Liberal traces to the Latin liber, meaning "free man." Liberal refers to personal qualities including an open mind, a tolerant spirit, a generous inclination, a willingness to spend, a desire to innovate, a wide knowledge, and an embrace of diversity. In a larger sense, liberals design state structures and rules to enact or encourage those qualities: religious liberty, the freedom of body, thought, and speech, an independent, plural civil society, the rule of law, private property, economic freedom, and a division of governmental powers. Liberalism evinces varying hues, but it is useful to offer a core story or family of rhetorical appeals. Philosophical purity is not my goal here. Rather, I examine how liberalism works as a useful language for public debate.
At liberalism's heart, Michael Doyle argues, is "an essential principle, the importance of the freedom of the individual. Above all, this is a belief in the importance of moral freedom, of a right to be treated and a duty to treat others as ethical subjects." Nancy Fraser defines the "core concepts of the liberal tradition" as "the equal autonomy and moral worth of human beings." In his story of liberalism's emergence, Isaac Kramnick claims that this equal autonomy entailed the capacity to author oneself. Rather than being defined by God, custom, or community, people "increasingly came to define themselves as active subjects. ... Their own enterprise and ability mattered; they possessed the opportunity (a key word) to determine their place through their own voluntary actions in this world."
People asserted that place through work. "Liberalism," Kramnick notes, "at its origin, is an ideology of work. It attributes virtue to people who are industrious and diligent and condemns as corrupt privileged aristocrats and leisured gentlefolk." In these persuasively appealing heroes and villains, as well as in other ways, liberalism cohered well with the Protestant reformation and emerging capitalist cultures. Like those reformers, liberals believed that people could interpret life as a series of meaningful choices, understand and assess the material needed to make those choices, and act out futures free from the hegemony of a church, a sovereign, or both. Merit and competition were dominant values in an order based on individual success and social mobility. Good fortune came to those who looked to the future, saw a need, and planned to meet it. The talented and vigorous would serve as models for the rest. A classic account is Chapter 5, "Of Property," in John Locke's Second Treatise of Government. It defined identity as economic; labor mixed with nature and gave the diligent title to the resulting product. Property revealed God's favor. "Do you not know," Paul (1 Corinthians 9:24) wrote, "that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it." Rewards no longer resulted from one's ascribed place in a chain of being, nor from a sovereign's favor, nor from sacrifice for the public good. No, one ran so as to win and the winnings filled the wallet.
For that reason, liberalism is also often defined in terms of its antipathies. If all should have the opportunity to make something of themselves, to become the classic "self-made man," then society needed to clear away the artificial barriers hindering their efforts. That meant a strong liberal distaste for the oft-conjoined powers of church and state. In the early modern era, governments sought to make war and collect taxes, two not unrelated activities. As an arm of the state, an established church assured the nation that the war was just, the taxes required, and the enemy evil. In addition, a state church could demand ideological conformity and enforce obedience to sacred and secular masters. This blend legitimated state power because God's will infused that state. By contrast, liberals opposed unchecked power, invoked individual conscience, and urged religious toleration. A state with absolute powers, clothed in the majesty of God, and able to grant benefits to favored economic actors precluded the emergence of a self-made person. In this society, one could only succeed, if that was possible, through favor rather than merit. This was unacceptable to early liberals. They called for individual emancipation, often defined as the broad extension of civic rights, an end to government restraints on commerce, and the cultivation of human reason and ambition. Kramnick contrasts the metaphors that defined the conflict: "If chains and immobility are the metaphoric embodiment of the hierarchical ideal, we should not be surprised that its liberal replacement was captured in talk of motion, mobility, and races."
These antipathies implied a positive project, one devoted to the creation of a society that would allow diligent workers to succeed. Diffident as it often was, the liberal state deployed its power to facilitate free competition. That meant the creation of open markets, ones based on the expression of individual preferences and not on a king's need for money nor on an arbitrary idea of a just price. In free markets, people pursued their interests under the protection of the rule of law; the state enforced contracts, monopolized the use of violence, and secured property rights. All stood equal before that law. Unlike other creeds (e.g., republicanism), people needed no unique insight (e.g., knowledge of the public good) to speak and act in the political arena. All persons, Adam Smith wrote, possessed a "propensity to truck, barter, and exchange" and so all had an interest in rules that would allow them to pursue that inclination. The nascent logic of liberalism indicated that was warrant enough for being a part of public life.
There were two big flies in the ointment. The first concerned the conflicts that inevitably erupted when people raced and political order became a dynamic process. No longer would the great chain of being, from God to king to peasant, stabilize communal life. Instead, liberals tried to make political order in a pitching world. Endless change, Edmund Fawcett observes, "thrilled and horrified" them: "It is not possible to understand their political temperament unless the hold on them of thrill and horror together is kept in mind." As emancipation released people from tradition, their ambition, reason, and industry would lead them to discover God's natural laws, making the world a more secure and predictable place. Or so liberals argued. But the willingness to question tradition "unleashed corrosive doubt," Karen Whedbee notes. Critics claimed that the "liberal demand for justification produces a terrifying lack of certainty and moral pluralism that threatens to fragment and, ultimately, obliterate both communal and individual identity." Yet to be human, Whedbee writes of John Stuart Mill's position, was to make choices. The "anxiety" this produces "is essential to the human condition." Only through argument and decision could people develop their full and fully human capacities. Liberalism became a language to manage uncertainty, the thrill and horror of individual growth, rhetorical justification, and social change.
Second, contingency also marked personhood. Absent eternal definitions, who possesses the capacity to become fully human? Who counts? In his "definition of man," Kenneth Burke argues that language defines humanity. Thus, people possess a "perfection principle," the desire "to name something by its 'proper' name," and to carry out the implications of that name. With his usual irony, he calls that the tendency to become "rotten with perfection." If people could define themselves in the market, the perfection principle extended the liberal project to other arenas. Quoting Wilhelm von Humboldt, Mill insisted that people must grow beyond money and by experimentation: "The 'end of man ... is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole.'" Self-realization became possible for those not now subject to the powerful and their designs. Mill continued, "Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing." His progressive principle authorized people to explore unique talents and insights, unleash eccentricities, and celebrate active individuality. Life was "not just a matter of what we believe and do, but a matter of the liveliness with which we believe and act." Much as people needed to create, develop, and own property, they should also create, develop, and own talents. In fact, the two enjoyed a reciprocal relation. Work could be a Romantic expression of the self, an exertion of one's will and skill on daily life. The idea of authorship came to mean more than money. It signified the conscious development of a comprehensive self.
Yet if I require my freedom, then I also have a duty to treat others as ethical subjects. Fraser calls this demand the "norm of participatory parity." All people should be able to access power; thus, liberals must eliminate "externally manifest and publicly verifiable impediments to some people's standing as full members of the community." Nadia Urbinati spies this sort of commitment in Mill's call for liberals to reveal and end "submission or docility." She terms this "liberty from subjection." It "postulates a redefinition of power relations in terms of symmetry and mutual responsibility." Liberty in this sense also "demands intervention and the removal of the factors of subjection." Contrary to a common complaint, then, liberals do possess a social sense, a grasp of the rules and resources that facilitate the pursuit of happiness and a commitment to end the subjection blocking some from that race. This sociality partly explains the emphasis on rights and obligations, on freedom of thought, conscience, body, and speech. If others cannot respond to me, argue, think, play, or trade with me, then I am not fully free because their efforts help to enlarge me, as mine do them. People and societies only develop fully through "symmetry and mutual responsibility." Many liberals beyond Mill view reciprocity as critical to political life, whether one calls it sympathy, as does Smith, equality, as does Ronald Dworkin, or the rule of justice, as does Chaim Perelman. They differ greatly, but each embraces reciprocity. Perelman defines its form: "The argument of reciprocity equates two beings or situations, by showing that correlative expressions in a relation ought to be treated in the same fashion. In formal logic, the terms A and B, antecedent and consequent of a relationship, R, can be inverted without difficulty if the relationship is symmetrical." In short, those in the same class must be treated equally.
The centrality of reciprocity has two implications. First, it links liberalism to democracy. Normatively, Alan Ryan writes, "to exclude anyone from the process of decision making in his or her society is inconsistent with the self-respect we seek for each individual. Nobody has a natural right to rule, and nobody can expect to rule" except by consent. Practically, democracy best accommodates the diverse and changing ambitions of free people. Rhetorically, reciprocity also characterizes many faiths (e.g., the Golden Rule), and the cultural resources of faith legitimate a liberal democracy. Second, it takes skilled rhetoric to define people as similar enough to deserve equality. That has long been the question for liberals. If one must treat people as one expects to be treated, then who counts as a person? The poor? Catholics? Women? African Americans? Gays? Rogers Smith claims that the history of liberal democracy in the United States consists of just such deliberations. This question of "who counts" is critical to liberalism because once one "becomes" a person, equal rights necessarily follow. Much as prudence defines republicanism, reciprocity defines the liberal persuasion and grounds Kennedy's rhetoric. If liberals demand respect for those like us, then reciprocity is the rhetorical strategy to make "the other" one of us.
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Excerpted from "John F. Kennedy and the Liberal Persuasion"
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Copyright © 2019 John M. Murphy.
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