Ted Sorensen

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Theodore "Ted" Sorensen

Born May 8, 1928
Nebraska
Occupation Special Counsel & Adviser, Speechwriter, lawyer
Political party Democrat
Spouse Gillian Sorensen
Children Three sons; one daughter

Theodore Chaikin "Ted" Sorensen (born May 8, 1928) is of Counsel (retired Senior Partner) at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and writer, best known as President John F. Kennedy's Special Counsel & Adviser, legendary speechwriter, and "alter-ego." President Kennedy once called him his "intellectual blood bank."[1]

Contents

[edit] Early life

Born in Nebraska, the son of Christian A. Sorensen, a Danish immigrant,[citation needed], the future attorney general of Nebraska,[2] and Annis Chaikin, of Russian Jewish descent[3], Sorensen graduated from Lincoln High School in 1945. He earned a bachelor's degree at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. He attended law school at the same university, graduating first in his class.[1]

Acting upon the advice of his college adviser, Sorensen took a year off his age to join John Kennedy's office as a legal aide shortly after JFK was sworn in as Senator in 1953.[1] Over the next decade, he became Kennedy's closest adviser.

[edit] Coauthorship of Profiles in Courage (1956)

At the age of 27, Sorensen had an important role in researching and drafting Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning book Profiles in Courage, prompting some controversy over the book's authorship. In May 2008, Sorensen in his autobiography, Counselor largely confirmed allegations that he had done much, if not most, of the writing. Sorensen wrote that he "did a first draft of most chapters" and "helped choose the words of many of its sentences". Sorensen claimed that in May 1957, Kennedy "unexpectedly and generously offered, and I happily accepted, a sum" for his work on the book.[4]

In December 1957, syndicated columnist Drew Pearson, interviewed on TV by Mike Wallace, said, "Jack Kennedy is . . . the only man in history that I know who won a Pulitzer prize on a book which was ghostwritten for him."[citation needed] Kennedy demanded a retraction. After Kennedy provided handwritten notes and Sorensen signed an affidavit attesting to Kennedy's authorship, Pearson acceded.[5] However, years later historian Herbert Parmet, after analyzing the text of Profiles in Courage for his book The Struggles of John F. Kennedy, argued that although it was probably Kennedy who guided the direction and message of the award-winning book and oversaw its production, it was clearly Sorensen who wrote the end product.[citation needed]

[edit] Kennedy Administration

White House photo of Sorensen during the Kennedy administration.
White House photo of Sorensen during the Kennedy administration.

Sorensen was President Kennedy's Special Counsel & Adviser, and primary speechwriter, the role for which he is best remembered today. His inaugural address for the new president exhorted listeners to "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country". This call to service is the phrase still most closely associated with the Kennedy administration today. Although Sorensen played an important part in the composition of the Inaugural Address, the famous turn of phrase that everyone remembers from that speech was actually written by Kennedy himself, and taken from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. This has been acknowledged by Sorensen as well as documented in several substantive biographies of JFK, most notably Profile of Power by Richard Reeves.

He served as Special Counsel & Adviser to the president, with responsibility for the domestic agenda; however, after the Bay of Pigs debacle, President Kennedy asked Sorensen to take part in foreign policy discussions as well. As a result, he played a critical role in resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis, drafting Kennedy's correspondence with Nikita Khrushchev.

After Kennedy was assassinated, he helped the new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, for several months, as LBJ recalled in his White House memoirs. Sorensen wrote LBJ's first speech to Congress, as well as his first State of the Union address.

Sorensen left the White House to write Kennedy, a biography published in 1965. Providing an insight into the Kennedy White House, it became an international bestseller, and was translated into several languages.

[edit] Politics after Kennedy

Sorensen later joined the law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, while still staying involved in politics. He played an important role in a number of campaigns, including the Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaign in 1968. Over the past four decades, Sorensen has led a prominent career as an international lawyer, advising governments around the world, as well as major international corporations.

In 1970, Sorensen ran for the U.S. Senate from New York, but lost in the primaries. In 1977 Jimmy Carter nominated him as Director of Central Intelligence, but the nomination was withdrawn before a Senate vote.

Sorensen was the national co-chairman for Gary Hart for the presidential election of 1984 and made several appearances on his behalf.[6]

In addition to his successful career as a lawyer, Sorensen has also been a frequent spokesman for liberal ideals and ideas, writing op-eds and delivering speeches on both domestic and international subjects. For several years in the 1960s, he was an editor at the Saturday Review.

He has been affiliated with a number of institutions, including the Council on Foreign Relations, the Century Institute, Princeton University, and the Institute of Politics at Harvard. Sorensen is an Advisory Board member for the Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy. He is also chair of the advisory board to the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life at Brandeis University.

In 2007, an imaginary Democratic presidential nomination acceptance speech written by Sorensen was published in the Washington Monthly. The magazine had solicited him to write the speech that he would most want the 2008 Democratic nominee to give at the 2008 party convention, without regard to the identity of the nominee.[7]

In July 2007, Sorensen endorsed Barack Obama for the presidential election in 2008.[8][9][10]

[edit] Personal

He is married to Gillian Sorensen of the United Nations Foundation. He has three sons and a daughter.

In the 1998 miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, Sorensen was played by Jack Gilpin; in the 2000 film Thirteen Days, he was played by Tim Kelleher.

[edit] Books by Ted Sorensen

  • Profiles in Courage (assisted JFK) (1956)
  • Decision-making in the White House (1963)
  • Kennedy (1965)
  • The Kennedy Legacy (1969)
  • Watchmen in the Night: Presidential Accountability After Watergate (1975)
  • A Different Kind of Presidency: A Proposal for Breaking the Political Deadlock (1984)
  • Let the Word Go Forth: The Speeches, Statements and Writings of John F. Kennedy, 1947-1963 (1988)
  • Why I Am a Democrat (1996)
  • Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History (2008)

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c ABC News online, 8 Feb 2008
  2. ^ NYT Sunday Book Review
  3. ^ Marcus 1981:173
  4. ^ Wall Street Journal, 9 May 2008.
  5. ^ Clarke 2005:26.
  6. ^ New York Times, 21 April 1983
  7. ^ Sorensen 2007, The New Vision
  8. ^ Guardian, 25 July 2007
  9. ^ Sorenson, video posted on YouTube.
  10. ^ The New Republic, 23 July 2007

[edit] References

[edit] External links