Quote of the Day (John F. Kennedy, on ‘The Comfort of Opinion’)

"As every past generation has had to disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truisms and stereotypes, so in our own time we must move on from the reassuring repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult, but essential confrontation with reality. For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." — President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), Yale University Commencement Address, June 11, 1962

Though I understand the impulse perfectly, it’s too bad that some people don’t recall more about John F. Kennedy than his assassination 62 years ago today and the trauma it inflicted on this nation. That goes as well for his deeply imperfect private life (which, as I noted in this prior blog post, on at least one occasion left him potentially subject to manipulation by J. Edgar Hoover).

As constant and, yes, as reckless as Kennedy’s philandering was, an awful lot of people today—including many whose evangelical faith would once have scorned adulterers in high places—overlook a later occupant of the Oval Office with such a propensity as bad, if not worse. And that later President has rarely if ever sounded the grace notes in public discourse that Kennedy consistently did.

JFK belonged to an era when statesmen and politicians didn’t communicate by cable TV or podcast soundbites, tweets, or memes. He addressed audiences that paid relatively prolonged attention, with words that sought to reason with, and, ultimately, persuade and even inspire them.

I wish more people wouldn’t blindly accept everything they read on social media. The Internet allows you to go right to original, primary sources—speeches, diaries, extended TV interviews, sometimes even court transcripts, even more—to see what a politician said or wrote. And with a bit more curiosity and digging, you can discover the context in which it was expressed.

So it is with the speech I’m quoting from today. The excerpt here has something to recommend (or dispute) about “a prefabricated set of interpretations” or even whether such preconceptions are more dangerous these days than lies.

But reading the context of the quote—the speech in full—reveals that JFK was making larger points, about the size and distribution of government, public fiscal policy, and public confidence in business and America. The conditions that held sway when he discussed all of this might have changed, but the issues endure. In fact, they go back to the creation of the Constitution.

All of this is in keeping with the fact that JFK was not afraid of public debate. Faced with challenges to his policies, he could deflect rather than denigrate. Asked at a press conference about a Republican National Committee resolution calling his administration a failure, for instance, he chuckled, “I assume it passed unanimously.”

Notice that he didn’t say, “You’re a terrible person and a terrible reporter,” as the current Oval Office occupant (hilariously hailed as a great communicator by many in the media) told an ABC reporter in the last week. Nor would JFK have chided a female Bloomberg News journalist, with two words that deserve their own corner in infamy, “Quiet, Piggy.”

These exchanges sum up how much we lost in this country since that terrible day in Dallas six decades ago: respect for differences of opinion and basic Presidential dignity. On my worst days, I fear that we may never recover them.