The Politics of Courage: Kennedy's Profiles as Political Thought

Abstract

Published 1955 during John F. Kennedy's tenure as a senator, Profiles Courage was an instant best-seller, receiving the Pulitzer prize that same year. Yet, for being such a widely acclaimed work, scholars and reviewers have been reluctant to engage the argument of the book. What has focused scholarly attention, instead, is intrigue: really wrote the book,1 whose political goals were served by writing the book (Burns 168), and might Kennedy have secured the Pulitzer prize (Burner 91, Burner and West 59)? When scholars have addressed issues the book, it is by way of synopses, a generic praise of courage (Burner and West 57), comments on style (Profiles 78), or suggestions that Kennedy never actually lived up to these words.2 Part of the difficulty with interpreting Profiles is that we approach the work from within a framework grounded a twentieth-century conception of politics as a process of interest articulation and aggregation. From this perspective, Profiles appears as little more than a series of anecdotes that say nothing substantive about politics but serve to advance the political interests of Kennedy.3 This framework, though, is particularly unsuitable for interpreting Profiles precisely because the book is engaged a challenge to this framework. We will argue that Profiles introduces a different conception of politics, one suggested by the two key words the title: profile and Both the language and arguments Profiles Courage seem foreign to us now, but they recall a Roman conception of profiling and its relationship to courage and politics. Understanding this conception requires that we look at some examples of Roman profiling to develop a vocabulary for interpreting this relationship between courage and politics. What emerges is a notion of courage that is not only necessary for, but made possible by, the public nature of politics. The very notion of profiling, with the emphasis on the individual actor politics and the performance of courageous deeds, appears as a fundamental departure from the prevailing, twentieth-century instrumental conception of politics as who gets what, when, how (Lasswell). In making this argument, Profiles seeks to rehumanize the political space-to make politics a realm of human action rather than impersonal processes. Roman Profiling as Politics It is one of the distinctive features of Roman thought that there are few statements of a political theory. A Roman conception of politics emerges, instead, through a cumulation of profiles. In describing the task of the Roman historian writing of the kinds of lives our ancestors live, Livy suggests, in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid (34). The history that Livy is referring to is a history of individuals rather than of political processes and institutions. These are not biographies, the modern sense of the term, but profiles meant to capture particular moments a life. Though the perspectives of the likes of Cicero, Plutarch, Suetonius, and Tacitus vary widely, what they share their emphasis on profiles is a conception of politics which individual virtue and public life are inextricably tied to each other. Where Plutarch, for example, focuses on the character of those entering public life, Cicero makes clear politics not only demands great individuals but also makes these individuals great. The qualities of character necessary for political greatness are many, but foremost among them is courage. The reason for this is because there is an extraordinary risk that one assumes entering a public realm that was notable, most of all, for its unpredictability. The value of profiles was that they served to recall these public deeds. …