Free Republic

Jack Kennedy won the presidency with the help of large amounts of cash – and a liberal number of lies, says Andrew Marr. Get the picture right, and your history will take care of itself. Jack Kennedy always got the picture right. Even now, it is hardly possible to glimpse the gleaming white smile, the sunlit hair and the perfect First Family without a lump in the throat. JFK became the icon of democratic optimism, the man who inspired half the world. Cut down in his prime, he never grew old enough to betray, disillusion or bore his legion of...

Theodore Chaikin Sorensen, whose prose mingled with the thoughts and words of his close friend John F. Kennedy to create some of the most memorable presidential speeches of the 20th century, has died, a week after suffering a stroke.

Too many American lawyers remained silent while the United States conducted illegal torture and the Constitution was violated by disregard for the rule of law, Ted Sorensen told law graduates Saturday. In a commencement address at the University of Nebraska College of Law, his alma mater, Sorensen urged the graduates to act with courage and embrace integrity in their professional pursuits. “Most of you as new lawyers will soon find it easy to make a buck but find it hard to make a difference,” he said, according to an advance copy of the speech obtained by the Journal Star. Sorensen,...

Ted Sorensen said Tuesday the election of Barack Obama makes him even more proud of his country and “more optimistic” about its future. The president-elect is “up to any task, any challenge,” Sorensen said. As one foreign statesman told him in a private letter, Sorensen said, “the day Obama walks into the White House, respect for the United States will rise immeasurably all over the world.” The election of the country’s first black president “says good things about America,” Sorensen said. Sorensen, who was chief adviser and speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy, was in Lincoln for a series of...

Barack Obama needs to overcome the “demographic challenge” of race by connecting with voters on a personal level, Ted Sorensen said Tuesday. Obama needs to become better-known as “a family man and a community organizer,” Sorensen said, stressing biography and his life experiences to move some voters past “their unease about voting for a black man.”Sorensen, the Nebraskan who served as President Kennedy’s chief adviser and speechwriter, addressed his homestate delegation at the Democratic national convention, then sat down for an interview. President Kennedy faced efforts to categorize him as the Catholic candidate for president, Sorensen recalled. “JFK thought it...

Ted Sorensen’s service to John F. Kennedy (as both US Senator and President) earned him legendary status as the most celebrated speechwriter in US history. Sorensen crafted the famous “Ask not…” phrase in the inaugural address, and wrote JFK’s stirring “New Frontier” acceptance speech when he won the Democratic nomination in 1960. Last week, Sorensen (now 79) wrote another speech intended to inspire the Democratic hordes who scent victory in another watershed election. He wrote a proposed “Acceptance Speech” which he means to offer to whichever candidate prevails in the nomination fight. Some of the carefully crafted language reads like...