Good Friday Morning!

1. Question – Would you rather be euphoric over presidential rhetoric or pragmatic?

2. Thought – Ike’s speech came at a crucial pivot in American politics and even public morality. On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy gave an inaugural address that signaled a cultural shift. Kennedy’s speech was meant to indicate a new direction in the march of history. One generation and one era was ending and another generation would, as he put it, “begin anew.” There would be a “new endeavor ” and “a new world of law.” The possibilities, he argued, were limitless. “Man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty,” he declared. Kennedy issued a call to uninhibited action. “We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship…” He called on his listeners not to just tolerate problems, but to end them: “Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease.” It was a speech of a man supremely confident in himself. It inspired millions of people around the world and set the tone and standard for political rhetoric ever since.

Three days earlier, however, Eisenhower had given a speech that epitomized the worldview that was fading away. Whereas Kennedy emphasized limitless possibilities, Eisenhower warned against hubris. Whereas Kennedy celebrated courage, Eisenhower celebrated prudence. Whereas Kennedy exhorted the nation to venture boldly forth, Eisenhower called for balance.

Eisenhower warned the country against beliefs in quick fixes. Americans, he said, should never believe that “some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.” He warned against human frailty, particularly the temptation to be shortsighted and selfish. He asked his countrymen to “avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources for tomorrow.” Echoing the thrifty ethos of his childhood, he reminded the nation that we cannot “mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.”

He warned, most famously, about the undue concentration of power, and the way unchecked power could lead to national ruin. He warned first about the military-industrial complex – “a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.” He also warned against “a scientific-technological elite,” a powerful network of government-funded experts who might be tempted to take power away from the citizenry. Like the nation’s founders, he built his politics on distrust of what people might do if they have unchecked power. He communicated the sense that in most of the times, leaders have more to gain from being stewards of what they have inherited than by being destroyers of what is there and creators of something new.

This was the speech of a man who had been raised to check his impulses and had then been chastened by life. It was the speech of a man who had seen what human beings are capable of, who had felt in his bones that man is a problem to himself. It was a speech of a man who used to tell his advisors “Let’s make our mistakes slowly,” because it is better to proceed to a decision gradually than to rush into anything before its time. (The Road to Character by David Brooks)