WASHINGTON – President Bush’s inaugural speech echoes no recent president as much as Democrat John F. Kennedy in its call to spread “this untamed fire of freedom” all across the world.
In his words, and even the rhythm of his speech, Bush evoked memories of Kennedy as he spoke of the war on terror as the duty of this generation, just as Kennedy painted the Cold War against the Soviet Union 44 years ago.
Kennedy said defending freedom “will light our country and all who serve it – and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.”
Bush said America has lit “a fire in the minds of men and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.”
Bush’s speech is mostly plain-spoken where Kennedy’s was poetic, but the message is the same – that America must be ready, as JFK put it, to “pay any price, bear any burden to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
Democratic speechwriter Bob Shrum – who worked for Sen. Ted Kennedy for many years – said Bush’s speech goes even further than JFK’s in calling for America to remake the world as Woodrow Wilson did at the start of the 20th century.
Both presidents offered a hardheaded kind of idealism in which defending liberty is good in itself – but also in America’s own self-interest.
Both also took a long view – Kennedy said the work of freedom might not be finished “in our lifetime on this planet,” and Bush yesterday said, “The great objective of ending tyranny is the concentrated work of generations.”
Kennedy said, “The torch has been passed to a new generation,” as he pledged to protect human rights “at home and around the world.”
Bush said: “From the viewpoint of centuries, the questions that come to us are narrowed and few. Did our generation advance the cause of freedom?”