Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (156 page)

3. Invest in your family dimension
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As life gets longer, young people are getting married later. Fine; that deliberation about a big choice should ultimately reverse the divorce rate. But make a commitment early in your second quarter; the smartest thing you can do in diversifying your life is to stop playing the field.

The wave of the future, in the Centenarian Strategy, is to frame your life in traditional family settings. Do your market research in singlehood, choose for the long term and then commit to marriage; have kids; avoid divorce; raise your likelihood of having grandchildren. Following this course, you can expect at least a couple of great-grandchildren to enjoy, to work with, and to help as you approach the century mark. If you plan properly now to protect your wallet and your intellect, you can be a family asset, not a liability, later; and your family, with all the headaches, will enrich your life.

4. Pace yourself; it’s a small world and a long life
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The centenarian thinks about success differently, with a longer view. He or she measures success in getting to personal satisfaction, which does not always mean getting to the top of the heap. Making money is important, never derogate building an estate that you and your progeny can use. But developing long-term loyalties in all the strands of your career and avocation and hobbies and recreation pays off in that satisfaction. Those loyalties also make life easier later; you can get things done across the different strands, helping someone in your avocation who has helped you in your career.

Ask yourself along the way: Whose approval is important to you? Whose is not? The centenarians do not stop to smell the flowers; they carry the flowers along.

5. Plan for at least one thoroughgoing discombobulation in your life
.

This can be a good shock, like meeting someone amazing, or developing a talent you never knew you had, or finding an opportunity that takes your career or avocation in a wholly new direction. Or you can find yourself, after years of success and loyal service, out on your ear in a merger or a downsizing or a hostile takeover.

It happened to me. I was running a multibillion-dollar conglomerate, doing just fine, but when I tried to take it private, somebody beat me to the punch. I wound up with a big bunch of money, which meant I got no sympathy from my friends, but I was out of a job. No airplane, no executive support system, no daily calendar full of appointments with big shots—no place to go in the morning.

Did I let it bother me? You bet I did. I plunged into the deepest blue funk imaginable. But luckily—and this was not part of any life strategy—
I had an avocation to turn to. It was a philanthropy, the Dana Foundation, and it had long been leading me into supporting the field of brain science. So I threw myself into that, applying what I had learned in marketing and finance to a field that needed an outsider with those credentials. And for the past ten years, I’ve gotten more sheer satisfaction out of marshaling the force of public opinion behind research into imaging, memory and conquering depression than anything I ever did as a boy wonder or a boardroom biggie.

But it would not have happened if I did not have that anchor to windward—the other, wholly unrelated activity to turn to. Success, or a resounding setback, in one career can lead to success, of another kind, in the parallel career.

That, in a nutshell, is how to cope with a challenge no graduating class has ever had—the challenge of a life with an active fourth quarter. Medical science will give most of you the body to blow out a hundred candles on your birthday cake, and the brain scientists will give you the life of your mind. That active memory will be their gift to you.

Unlike most of today’s centenarians, you will be able to remember and use what you’ve learned in your century. You will be able, in the poet’s words, to enjoy “the last of life, for which the first was made.” It’s up to you to make sure you have a varied life that’s worth remembering.

Good luck. Happy commencement. And a happy hundredth birthday.

Kennedy’s visit to Dallas—a Texas city whose vote he lost in his 1960 election victory—was in the nature of a precampaign swing designed to mend fences. He planned, after his Dallas motorcade, to deliver a speech at the Trade Mart in which he would begin to sketch part of his vision for a second term.

The planned address was vintage Kennedy: high-minded, eloquent, but not without a jab at his presumed opponent in 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater. Without naming the Arizona senator, and using the alliteration of “words”/“weapons,” “vituperation”/“victory,” Kennedy’s prepared address derided “voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality… which apparently assume that words will suffice without weapons, that vituperation is as good as victory….” After recalling the slogan of Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson in 1952—“talk sense to the American people”—Kennedy, praised as a master of the use of words himself, seemed to remember that the victor in that election was the less eloquent Dwight Eisenhower, and proceeded to play down the power of political rhetoric. “Words alone are not enough…. If we are strong, our strength will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be of no help.”

The young president’s speech went on to specify how speeches themselves were not the cause of the turning points in world affairs. “It was not the Monroe Doctrine that kept all Europe away from this hemisphere—it was the strength of the British fleet and the width of the Atlantic Ocean. It was not General Marshall’s speech at Harvard”—where the Marshall Plan was first articulated—“which kept communism out of Western Europe—it was the strength and stability made possible by our military and economic assistance.” He drove the point home by recalling his own action in the Cuban missile crisis, where “our successful defense of freedom was due not to the words we used, but to the strength we stood ready to use on behalf of the principles we stand ready to defend.”

Paradoxically, in derogating the power of oratory he did not fail to choose his words with skill: note his balance of “use” and used,” which overlapped “stood ready” and “stand ready” in that sentence. In the same way, he had just used “strength” twice as the fundaments of his bridge between the two sentences about Monroe and Marshall.

In his conclusion, after quoting Luke 2:14, “peace on earth, good will toward men,” so often evoked on Christmas cards, he wanted to end on a much less familiar, right-makes-might note—that undergirding the need for strength that he had been stressing, as war in Vietnam loomed, must be the righteousness of America’s cause. To do this, his script turned to a more admonitory verse in the book of Psalms, 127:1, “Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”

Kennedy did not leave the city of Dallas alive. His fine words about how fine words were not enough were never delivered.

***

I AM HONORED
to have this invitation to address the annual meeting of the Dallas Citizens Council, joined by the members of the Dallas Assembly—and pleased to have this opportunity to salute the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest….

In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America’s leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason, or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.

There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. Those voices are inevitable.

But today other voices are heard in the land—voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality, wholly unsuited to the sixties, doctrines which apparently assume that words will suffice without weapons, that vituperation is as good as victory and that peace is a sign of weakness. At a time when the national debt is steadily being reduced in terms of its burden on our economy, they see that debt as the greatest single threat to our security. At a time when we are steadily reducing the number of federal employees serving every thousand citizens, they fear those supposed hordes of civil servants far more than the actual hordes of opposing armies.

We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will “talk sense to the American people.” But we can hope that fewer
people will listen to nonsense. And the notion that this nation is headed for defeat through deficit, or that strength is but a matter of slogans, is nothing but just plain nonsense.

I want to discuss with you today the status of our strength and our security because this question clearly calls for the most responsible qualities of leadership and the most enlightened products of scholarship. For this nation’s strength and security are not easily or cheaply obtained, nor are they quickly and simply explained. There are many kinds of strength and no one kind will suffice. Overwhelming nuclear strength cannot stop a guerrilla war. Formal pacts of alliance cannot stop internal subversion. Displays of material wealth cannot stop the disillusionment of diplomats subjected to discrimination.

Above all, words alone are not enough. The United States is a peaceful nation. And where our strength and determination are clear, our words need merely to convey conviction, not belligerence. If we are strong, our strength will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be of no help.

I realize that this nation often tends to identify turning points in world affairs with the major addresses which preceded them. But it was not the Monroe Doctrine that kept all Europe away from this hemisphere—it was the strength of the British fleet and the width of the Atlantic Ocean. It was not General Marshall’s speech at Harvard which kept communism out of Western Europe—it was the strength and stability made possible by our military and economic assistance.

In this administration also it has been necessary at times to issue specific warnings—warnings that we could not stand by and watch the Communists conquer Laos by force, or intervene in the Congo, or swallow West Berlin, or maintain offensive missiles on Cuba. But while our goals were at least temporarily obtained in these and other instances, our successful defense of freedom was due not to the words we used, but to the strength we stood ready to use on behalf of the principles we stand ready to defend….

It should be clear by now that a nation can be no stronger abroad than she is at home. Only an America which practices what it preaches about equal rights and social justice will be respected by those whose choice affects our future. Only an America which has fully educated its citizens is fully capable of tackling the complex problems and perceiving the hidden dangers of the world in which we live. And only an America which is growing and prospering economically can sustain the worldwide defenses of freedom, while demonstrating to all concerned the opportunities of our system and society.

It is clear, therefore, that we are strengthening our security as well as
our economy by our recent record increases in national income and output—by surging ahead of most of Western Europe in the rate of business expansion and the margin of corporate profits, by maintaining a more stable level of prices than almost any of our overseas competitors, and by cutting personal and corporate income taxes by some $11 billion, as I have proposed, to assure this nation of the longest and strongest expansion in our peacetime economic history.

This nation’s total output—which three years ago was at the $500 billion mark—will soon pass $600 billion, for a record rise of over $100 billion in 3 years. For the first time in history we have 70 million men and women at work. For the first time in history average factory earnings have exceeded $100 a week. For the first time in history corporation profits after taxes—which have risen 43 percent in less than three years—have an annual level of $27.4 billion.

My friends and fellow citizens: I cite these facts and figures to make it clear that America today is stronger than ever before. Our adversaries have not abandoned their ambitions, our dangers have not diminished, our vigilance cannot be relaxed. But now we have the military, the scientific, and the economic strength to do whatever must be done for the preservation and promotion of freedom.

That strength will never be used in pursuit of aggressive ambitions—it will always be used in pursuit of peace. It will never be used to promote provocations—it will always be used to promote the peaceful settlement of disputes.

We in this country, in this generation, are—by destiny rather than choice—the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of “peace on earth, good will toward men.” That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: “Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”

Rarely do we have the opportunity to consider the choice of speeches before a president at a critical moment in his life.

On August 17, 1998, President Bill Clinton, under threat of subpoena, appeared before a federal grand jury impaneled by Independent Counsel Ken Starr to answer questions about whether he lied under oath during a deposition in a civil suit brought by Paula Corbin Jones charging sexual harassment. Though denying that he committed perjury, Clinton admitted having had an “inappropriate sexual relationship” with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern.