A Senator Looks at Courage

Abstract

THis essay has two purposes. The first is to call the attention of readers of this journal to a book, Senator John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage,' which might be of some interest to them and which they might not have run across in the ordinary course of events. The second is to reflect a bit on various facets of this interest, and to draw from it a moral or two. Senator Kennedy's concern as an amateur historian is to examine in this volume a peculiar species of courage -that to which political officials in a democratic government are liable when beset by the various pressures of constituents, associates, circumstances, opportunities, obligations, and principles. The subjects whose exposures to these problems are considered here were all at one time or another United States Senators; and, for some eight of them, we are presented in detail with some critical and complicated occasion, or series of occasions, requiring the peculiar courage in question. The figures range from John Quincy Adams to Robert A. Taft, and we see in succession haunted men, many of them most vivid personalities, embroiled at critical points in our history-the pre-Civil War controversies over preservation of the Union, the animosities of Reconstruction, the post-World War hysterias, and so on. In each case, the legislator is faced with a dilemma involving, on one side, his clear convictions concerning right, the demands of the American tradition, and ultimate welfare; and, on the other, responsibilities to constituents, personal ambitions, prevailing public opinion, and even consistency with his own past positions and pronouncements. This is the basic theme, though there are many variations in terms of the weight of the factors, the color of the personality, and the demands of the circumstances. I am not in a position to assess the Senator's historical accuracy and acumen, nor do I consider it important to do so. The important point for most readers is that he has to a fine degree the dramatist's sense for that critical situation on which are focused irreconcilable and variously valid demands, along with the moralist's sense for the potential agonies of human choice. The Senator's prose style is far from being of high order, and it often degenerates to a flat, textbook directness decidedly lacking in precision. Also, his narrative arrangement is sometimes faulty-both deficiencies being doubtless a result of undue dependence on the admonitions of contemporary American journalese. But the account remains vivid, because of a sure sense for peculiarities of character, subtleties of legislative responsibility, and problematic convergence of circumstances. For readers of this journal, there are various particular conflicts implied by the book which raise teasing theoretical puzzles-for example, the possible conflict for the statesman between responsibility to constituents' will and responsibility to their welfare; the tensions between constitutional integrity, preservation of traditional values, and the will of the people in particular instances; or the democratic tendency to pillory men who (though ambitious) would rather be right than President. These tidbits have a wide and fascinating range, and I invite you to savor some of them; but I am concerned here with the more basic problem of food for thought implied in the general presentation of the peculiarities of the situation of political choice. The problem with which the Senator continually presents us here is the critical convergence of two modes of thought: the theoretical concern for ultimate moral principles and political fact, and the practical concern for direct action in actual situa-