Before he was President, Senator John F. Kennedy 'wrote' Profiles in Courage, which went on to become a bestseller and won him the Pulitzer Prize for biography. It is a short biographical work exploring the stories of Senators in the United States who were courageous by going against their party mandate in the name of justice, righteousness, or the constitution of the United States of America.
I picked up this book at JFK's Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, which I wrote more about in the previous post. This book was kind of JFK's first mainstream introduction other than his famous WWII PT Boat sinking story and cemented his image as not just a handsome war hero but as an intellectual of sorts who could guide the American people despite being young himself—not to get ahead of ourselves but of course he would later become the youngest elected President ever.
However, what’s perhaps more interesting than the stories of courage in this book is the lore behind this book. My first introduction to this book was through David Nasaw’s The Patriarch which is a biography of his father, Joseph Patrick Kennedy Snr. In that book, Nasaw talks about how Kennedy Snr became one of the top five richest Americans and then used his wealth to influence his nine kids’ political futures and created the Kennedy Political dynasty that we know today, hence “The Patriarch” title.
In that book, it is mentioned that Kennedy’s main speechwriter and aide Ted Sorensen basically ghostwrote the book (Sorensen would confirm this decades later). Moreover, one of the most influential New York Times journalists, Arthur Krock, who had been a close personal friend of Kennedy Snr. (and on the Pulitzer board) played his part. Thus, the coveted Pulitzer Prize for biography which gave credibility to Kennedy’s intellectualism was basically bought by his rich father.
Drew Pearson, the most prominent investigative journalist of the era, on a Mike Wallace interview in December 1957 bluntly claimed that “John F. Kennedy is the only man in history that I know who won a Pulitzer Prize for a book that was ghostwritten for him”. This statement exposed what was by then an open secret in Washington circles that the Senator’s aide had written the book and his father bought him the coveted Pulitzer.
Kennedy Snr. heard about this and immediately rang his lawyer and yelled, “Sue the bastards for fifty million dollars”. His lawyer and his son, Robert F. Kennedy, showed up at ABC and demanded a full retraction and apology. While Wallace and Pearson stuck to their guns, ABC eventually apologised.
Decades later, journalists and historians would debate and try to uncover the extent to which the Former President had actually written the book that would cement the basis for his philosopher-king image and the Kennedy clan even secured a sworn affidavit from Sorensen that downplayed his role in the book. However, later in his own autobiography in 2008, he would basically admit to having played a major role in the book.
JFK’s Presidential Museum basically starts with Profiles in Courage in 1957 and then moves on to the 1960 Presidential campaign and all his achievements during his short tenure as President. This is obviously quite ironic considering that JFK would be one of the last American Presidents who was actually looked up to for his values, one of the key ones being courage as demonstrated during the WWII PT Boat ordeal, Bay of Pigs fallout, Cuban Missile Crisis, civil rights and Berlin Wall Speech.
While we can’t completely judge a historical figure based on one action they took three years before they were (barely) handed the mandate to lead the most powerful country in the world at one of its most pivotal periods in history, episodes like this expose the less explored parts of history that are hidden away with money and power.
Instead of hammering on more about Kennedy, let’s explore a bit about what the book actually contained and why it’s not hidden further (it’s not a bad book by Sorensen and his researchers).
As mentioned before, Profiles in Courage was written when Kennedy was a Senator and he was actually recovering from a major back surgery to get rid of his back pain which originated from his famous WWII PT Boat sinking saga. Senator Kennedy writes a short biography of eight US Senators who against all odds, stuck to their beliefs and while they may have seemed foolish during their time and even committed political suicide and irrevocably ruined their careers, history would eventually prove them right.
While the book provides a surface level wikipedia-esque summary for each of the eight Senators’ lives and the time period they lived before the courageous act(s) that would change the course of the U.S. Senate and thus history, I still found it enthralling due to the deeply held beliefs so central to these people that were at stake and could be saved with the power of one Yea or Nay.
I am reminded of the Thomas Carlyle quote, “The history of the world is but the biography of great men”. This book was basically a brief history of the U.S. Senate through the eight senators spanning from the American Revolution to the Second World War. The stories of courage and the importance of the Senators’ votes in changing or not changing America were fascinating. I would probably recommend this book if you are interested in understanding American politics or power but as mentioned before, it is brief and it’s main benefit is that it’s nudging me to actually read more about who Sam Houston was or the stories of the Great Triumvirate consisting of John Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster who I have heard loads about in various books but never got to understand what they actually did in the American government.
To conclude, the story behind this book was more fascinating than its contents and reveals the less glamorous ways in which power operates in politics. While the senators were courageous in their own ways, in this episode America’s beloved President was not, and the fact that the Kennedy clan has maintained this story even decades after his death through manipulation and false narratives is just one of the many ways the story of history is told to serve power.
In the end, Profiles in Courage sits in the Presidential Library as a perfect prologue to the Kennedy legend: the young philosopher-king who would face down nuclear war with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis, stare down segregationists for civil rights and fall to an assassin’s bullets in a moment that would freeze American television screens and their hearts. It’s a narrative that is so perfect and cinematically crafted, that questioning the authorship of a mere book feels almost gauche. And perhaps that’s the point. The Kennedys understood more than most that in America, a beautiful story, well-told and well-funded, will always triumph over mere truth. After all, who are we to let facts interfere with a perfect all-American myth?