Kenneth Zagacki and Richard Cherwitz: The world would be safer if Donald Trump talked like John F. Kennedy

Kenneth Zagacki and Richard Cherwitz / Special to the Post-Gazette

Today, a president’s handling of international or domestic crises, however competent or inept, is immediately subject to hyperbolic sanctification and criticism. The president himself may contribute to that by the way he speaks about the crises. In today’s highly charged political environment, that means chaos and confusion when the nation and world need calm and clarity.

A president's words once mattered so much that they were meticulously chosen, and the policies carefully vetted. President John F. Kennedy’s October 22, 1962, Cuban Missile Crisis televised address to the nation is a model for the way a president should speak.

A well-regarded speech

Given in response to the placement of Soviet offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba and amidst furious deliberations and backchannel negotiations to remove them, Kennedy's speech is well regarded for two reasons, its organization and its style.

First, its organization, beginning with an opening narrative clearly, if starkly describing the situation. It depicted the U.S. as the victim responding to a provocation by an adversary, the Soviet Union, and employed compelling, empirical evidence (spy plane photos) supporting the president's claims that the Soviets were building nuclear missile launch pads 90 miles from the American shore.

The president then described the specific military responses and possible additional replies if those first responses didn't work, as well as an offer for U.S. officials to discuss the problem with Soviet representatives through international forums.

He presented his reasons for responding to the Soviets as strongly as he did, not to assert American power but to protect the world. “The 1930’s taught us a clear lesson: aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked, ultimately leads to war,” he said. “This nation is opposed to war.”

Finally, Kennedy appealed directly, first to the Cuban people, urging them to reject the deployment of Soviet missiles, and then to the American people, urging them to support the president's actions, as opposed to surrendering or submitting to Soviet aggression.

A second reason the speech is so well-regarded is the speech’s style. The president spoke as someone above the fray. He included enough self-references to indicate that he understood the crisis at hand and was rationally directing events. But not so many that he appeared self-interested or self-congratulatory.

Indeed, in comparison to how many modern political leaders speak with such sureness, Kennedy’s speech humbly admitted the uncertainty accompanying the complex "quarantining" (a careful parsing of words by Kennedy) he had ordered of Cuba. He admitted that the U.S. had to walk a "difficult and dangerous " path. No one, not even he, the commander-in-chief, could "foresee precisely what" would happen.

The speech was devoid of exaggeration. Neither did Kennedy blame his predecessors for the Soviet incursion in Cuba, President Eisenhower, a Republican, and President Truman, a Democrat. (In fact, privately he consulted them.) He did not try to score political points.

A speech that helped resolve the crisis

Kennedy’s speech could not by itself convince the Soviet Union to do what America wanted. However, it did contribute to the resolution of the crisis by confirming for anxious Americans and — just as importantly — their allies that the U.S. was proceeding cautiously yet decisively through both diplomatic and military means. This, even as the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. teetered on the brink of nuclear war.

And while the background negotiations and the quarantine that eventually calmed the situation were imperfect (in at least once instance, barely avoiding an incident between the US Navy and a Soviet nuclear-armed submarine that could have ignited WWIII), the final agreement was mutually satisfactory to most. The Soviets removed their missiles, and the US pledged not to invade Cuba and to dismantle obsolete nuclear weapons in Turkey.

Kennedy, ever the egotist despite his sometimes self-deprecating humor, certainly worried about his legacy as president. Robert F. Kennedy, the president’s brother and then Attorney General, and many others sought to mythify the president's handling of the Cuban missile crisis years afterward.

Nevertheless, there is little in Kennedy's speech or in his post-crisis comments to suggest that in this matter he was interested in legacy, self-aggrandizement or personal acclaim. Had he survived into old age, probably he would have conceded the facts he got wrong and the misjudgments he made and how closely the nation had come to a disastrous nuclear confrontation.

A model of crisis rhetoric

Still, Kennedy's Cuban Missile Crisis address is a model of presidential crisis rhetoric precisely because it clearly clarified the scope of the threat with verifiable evidence and how to deal prudently but assertively with it, avoided any personal imprint and politics, admitted the dangers of the situation, and put the security of America and its allies and what the president referred to as "peace and freedom" above all else.

Current leaders would be wise to follow John F. Kennedy's model when facing and talking publicly about today's international crises.

Kenneth Zagacki is a professor of communication at North Carolina State University. Richard Cherwitz is professor emeritus at the Moddy College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin. Their previous article was “Not everyone's common sense is sense.”