ASK WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY
Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) Fifty-four years ago today, January 20, 1961, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy spoke the words which would be the hallmark of his presidency and would be forever associated with the youngest elected chief executive in the history of the nation...
"And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
JFK Inaugural Address
Richard J. Tofel's Sounding The Trumpet, The Making of John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address (2005) gives us great insight into the speech's background, writing and delivery. Let's take a look what he writes about the most famous line.
Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) Fifty-four years ago today, January 20, 1961, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy spoke the words which would be the hallmark of his presidency and would be forever associated with the youngest elected chief executive in the history of the nation...
"And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
JFK Inaugural Address
January 20, 1961
US Army Signal Corps
JFK Library Image
JFK Library Image
Richard J. Tofel's Sounding The Trumpet, The Making of John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address (2005) gives us great insight into the speech's background, writing and delivery. Let's take a look what he writes about the most famous line.
First, Mr. Tofel describes the speech as a collaboration between JFK and his primary speech writer Theodore Sorenson.
In Sorenson's first draft, the words appeared as... "So ask not what your country is going to do for you..."
And, as a work in progress, by January 10th, it became...
"My fellow Americans, ask not what your country WILL do for you, ask rather what you can do for your country."
And in what Mr. Tofel identifies as "The Penultimate Draft" of January 17th...
"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country WILL do for you, but what you can do for your country."
That is exactly as the phrase appears on JFK's reading copy. Richard Tofel tells us that it was "only on delivery" that the new President of the United States spoke it as..
"And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country CAN do for you ask what you can do for your country."
Ted Sorenson would later write that President Kennedy...
"believed in the power and glory of words--both written and spoken--to win votes, to set goals, to change minds, to move nations..."
That belief was most evident 54 years ago today and most explicitly in setting the goals of the presidential administration of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. His words electrified the Nation and inspired my generation.
SOURCE
"Sounding The Trumpet, The Making of John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address," by Richard J. Tofel, Ivan R. Dee Publisher, Chicago, 2005.
