The Ghost of Mahathirism Past is Nigh

Okay, Mahathir is truly an old man. He is a sprightly 94 going 110. But, to fixate on his age would be a major mistake when trying to analyse his second tenure as Prime Minister of Malaysia. So, let us just put his age out there and just leave it as a statement of fact. Let us not even try to be witty and say that he is an old man in a hurry.

What causes disquiet is the earnestness in which his Parti Pribumi Bersatu is courting UMNO MPs. 

In this respect Dr M and his would-be successor, Anwar Ibrahim exhibits a  common vulpine desire to induce MPs from one party to betray their party and hop over. Let us leave Anwar Ibrahim aside for now and focus on Dr M.

Pribumi is an overtly race-based party. It is a party for Malays. It has a superficial marketing tag line that covers other indigenous Malaysians to justify the Pribumi label in its name.

The realpolitik of the Malaysian political landscape in the wake of GE14 is that the Malay voters are divided 40:30:30. 40% UMNO, 30% PAS and 30% Pakatan Harapan coalition.

But, pause for a moment here. Context is important. In the run up to the May 9 General Elections, UMNO was a powerful juggernaut that was using the full might of its resources to reach into the Malay heartland to create strong imagery about how UMNO was the Protector of the Malays. Billions of Ringgit were poured in every possible media and outreach channel to create that sentiment.

And, with all those efforts, UMNO could only reach a paltry 40% of the Malay voters.

As for PAS, its ability to garner 30% of the Malay votes is very highly skewed to the East Coast, particularly its traditional strongholds of Kelantan and Terengganu. No magic charisma there.

So, what is my point? 

My point is that just by working hard, learning on the job quickly and staying corrupt-free, it is very, very certain that Pakatan Harapan's Malay voter base of support can only increase. I dare say, by GE15, 55% to 60% of the Malay voter base will shift to Pakatan Harapan's component parties.

So, my question is, why is Dr M in such a hurry to induce UMNO MPs to jump ship and betray the Malay voters who supported UMNO in GE14?

Ever the crafty vulpine fellow that he is, Dr M has lamented that many structural reforms cannot take place without the Holy Grail of the 2/3 majority in the Malaysian Parliament.

My answer to the 2/3 majority argument is, I am sorry to say, BULLSHIT.

Even as we speak, live and breathe today, since May 9, reforms are taking place. Not very visible, not high drama, but real reforms. 

The reduction of corruption at all levels of government is already one form of reform. 

The opening of tenders, with some necessary weightage given to Bumiputra contractors, is reform.

The Pakatan Harapan government is not perfect. Of course, it isn't. But, it has its collective heart and intent of corruption-free and efficient governance in the correct place. The Malaysian voters and Malay voters are not stupid. They will see and feel the advantages of reform. 

So, why is Dr M trying to gather the souls of MPs of the dying UMNO?

That is something that we need to ponder over.

In the meantime, I will just say this; Mahathir and Pribumi's inducements for UMNO MPs to betray UMNO and the Malay voters who voted for UMNO is very, very bad for Malaysian democracy.

And, in the wee hours that I am blogging this, in a moment of insane nano second flickering flash of insight, I may have had a delusionary thought that maybe, just maybe, but, I cannot be sure, Mahathir is wielding his secret keris to subvert the multiracial Parti Keadilan's position of having 50 MPs and the Pakatan Harapan coalition's equation of elected MPs so that Pribumi will dominate as the new UMNO. Nakhoda lama jadi nakhoda kapal baru. Nadi lama tak ubah langsung. Inilah sandiwara yang paling tinggi tahapnya. 

What is that old saw about a leopard being unable to change its spots?

But, no, it cannot be true-la. Mahathir has experienced a second Lazarus Effect. He is a manusia bertaubat. Surely, the old Mahafiraun, authoritarian Mahathir is gone and, now we have a brand spanking new grandpatriarchal Mahathir. Didn't he shed tears in the video ad when hugging the 2 innocent children saying that Atuk needed to correct past mistakes?

Ya-la. I am delusionary aren't I?

As a postscript, here is a piece of JFK wisdom imparted during his Inaugural Address on the freezing morning of January 20, 1961-

... remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.

Remembering JFK

Does everyone love a dead hero? I'm not sure about that. In any case, JFK was never a hero to me.

So, why do I habitually make reference to him? Why do I have close to 100 books on him, his parents and his siblings?

It was in 1979 that I "discovered" JFK. It was through his Inaugural Address, in fact.

I was struggling to prepare for the district English-language school debates. My team and I had reached the district finals. The topic was a dramatic oxymoronic phrase, "War is necessary for peace". We were the proposers.

I chanced upon a selection of speeches by U.S. Presidents. One of my sisters must have bought it from the Logos, a ship that acted as a floating book store in the 1970s, when it berthed at Port Klang.

One would imagine that there might have been more apposite phrases in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, in the way, he, with a spartan 44 words, could consecrate the dead soldiers of the Union after a bloody battle. It would have seemed more inspirational and elegant when used in support the the proposition that I had to make in the district debating finals.

Somehow, Kennedy's Inaugural Address lent a stronger resonance to me. And, I used it.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans -- born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

So let us begin anew -- remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.

We won the district finals and I was adjudged to be the best debater in the final round. I owed that accolade, in part, to the soaring words of Kennedy and Ted Sorensen.

As I write this blog entry, many parts of the world are preparing to honour JFK on 50th anniversary of the day he died.

There are a myriad of reasons as to why JFK and the Kennedy mystique continues to enthral people. Some are drawn to his martyrdom (not caring what he stood for or, whether he stood for anything in particular). Others are drawn to the 1960s-ness of his epoch. He was cooler than Don Draper; hell, he may have been one of the inspirations for the Don Draper character. He, with James Dean, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Marilyn Monroe and many others represented the iconic deaths that so horrified and transmogrified our memories of the 1960s.

My fascination with JFK is about his love and respect of the written word, the spoken word and History. 

It is also about his ability to, in turn, fascinate and inspire so many biographers to write about him.

In the American presidential pantheon JFK achieved so little in legislative affairs and governance when compared with presidents such as James Monroe, Woodrow Wilson, Ted Roosevelt or Franklin Roosevelt. Yet, his memory endures and thrives.

This is the stuff that is fodder for academics and biographers.

I just wanted to tip my hat, on this day, to someone who helped inspire my love and respect of the written word, the spoken word and History. 

That is all.

Civility is not a sign of weakness

I have been self-indulgent in pursuing my work and personal matters. These past months of have been a serendipitous in the main with the odd spikes of exigencies which require urgent attention. By and large I have been in cruise mode. I have been and, still am, in a happy mode.

I read a piece of fiction in my college years where the author had a narrative about the necessity of maintaining a degree of tension, some measure of tautness in one's emotional outlook on things, in order to produce excellent work, be it in the arts or any vocation. In short, one needs a degree of unhappiness to keep up the good work!

That has always struck me as being a bleak assessment of things; don't you think?

But, it is, sadly, true.

There have been a widely held perspective that Nobel Prizes awarded in the sciences have tended been in honour of work done by the recipients when they were below 35 years of age. 

This demographic perspective is consistent with my own experience.

Was it not Confucius who said, thus-

“The Master says: At 15, I set my heart on learning. At 30 I know where I stand (my character has been formed). At 40, I have no more doubts, at 50, I know the will of Heaven, at 60 my ears are attuned (i.e. my moral sense is well-developed), at 70, I follow my heart’s desire without crossing the line (without breaking moral principles).” 

So, if I may hazard an observation, it would be that if one experiences a measure of happiness and contentment, one's creative tension is commensurately reduced; a happy and contented person has less desire to push the envelope, so to speak.

Is this a bad thing?

I think not.

My recent experience in engaging people everywhere, while at work, while shopping, while anywhere, has proven that my happier persona has percolated and transferred some degree of happiness to people I have contact with.

Is this a bad thing?

I think not.

The salutary effect of my present emotional state is that when I skim read all the things relating to recent Malaysian political matters I do not experience any strong emotions. I just see all the goings on as a sick game of politics.

My hope is that the players and their sycophantic followers know that it is what it is, a mere game.

My concern is that the game may be taken too seriously with dire consequences.

I leave you with one of my favourite phrases from JFK's Inaugural Address on January 20, 1961-

Civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof.

Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero

Chris Matthews host of MSNBC's show has published a new book on John F. Kennedy. The video clip below is interesting not just for the little nuggets that Matthews throws in on JFK but, also the continuing relevance of JFK in the American political psyche about what it takes to be a political leader.

As always, Malaysians should take all this in in the context of Malaysian politics and leadership.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Here is a nugget about how JFK is likely to have got his impulse to use the now famous phrase, "Ask not, what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

JFK's 'ask not' line traced back to prep school

Nov 1 (Reuters) - John F. Kennedy's most famous turn of phrase was inspired by the headmaster of his New England prep school, according to a new book on America's only president to have won the Pulitzer Prize.

In his 14-minute 1961 inaugural speech, which addressed the United States' role in the Cold War, Kennedy told Americans to "ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country."

Kennedy, it turns out, had heard something like it before.

Two documents unearthed by MSNBC television host Chris Matthews in his book "Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero," show that the future president's headmaster at the elite Choate boarding school in Connecticut in the early 1930s had used a similar exhortation.

"The youth who loves his alma matter will always ask not 'What can she do for me?' but 'What can I do for her?" the headmaster said, quoting a Harvard University dean.

The book says that Kennedy, who was nearly expelled from Choate for his rebellious hijinks, boosted his 1960 presidential bid with small but well-timed moves.

Libido and Leadership

Politics is hypocrisy in action. Public life is all about hypocritical perceptions.

In the privacy of private conversations between men (and, some say, women) sex is likely to be the number one topic. The racier, the better. The juicier, the better. And, special accolades are given to the spinner of the sexual yarn if he (or, she) is the principal protagonist.

But, in public life, whether one is a political leader or a celebrity (think Charlie Sheen and Tiger Woods), sexual peccadilloes are frowned upon. There are clearly double standards to be applied.

From another perspective, some may regard lurid stories about leaders, be they political or business leaders, as positive news.

I can sense arched eyebrows and wide eyes at this point.

How can such news be positive?

Well, from a physiological point of view, such lurid stories suggest that the political or business leader in question is in good health. For, how can one "get it on" unless one can "rise" to the occasion?

A stressed-out person, let alone high-profile political or business leader, will exhibit the symptom of poor libido. He just can't get it on.

So, if we hear lurid stories about political or business leaders, it means that they are managing their stress pretty well and, they are in good physical health.

Posthumous stories of JFK having gotten it on faster than a rabbit in heat only reaffirmed his ability to get it on in leadership terms.

A sexually frustrated leader is not fun to be with, I'm sure.

Oh, yes, there is the other *yawn* boring perspective about morals and morality.

But, remember that for every poor, sexually deprived (and, depraved) person who may take umbrage at public figures who are accused of having sexual flings, there are many others who may feel that such news is evidence of libido and, therefore, physical fitness for high office.

Let the person who has no vice stand up to claim leadership.

Then, let the rest of us dispose of that person because there is a statistical certainty that under such leadership Life will be worse than Death.

No one likes a killjoy for a leader, whether in politics or in business.

I'm just saying....

Ted Sorensen

Every leader needs a good speechwriter and alter ego. He had two close confidantes with whom he could bounce ideas and receive advice - the kind of advice that is free of any sycophancy. John F. Kennedy was lucky. He had Bobby and Ted.

There was Robert F. Kennedy. Bobby was the enforcer who could run interference to deflect JFK from any political danger.

Then, there was Ted Sorensen, who died yesterday. With Sorensen's passing, the mythical Camelot of the Kennedy Presidency has lost its final link.

I have done a post sometime ago in the eve of Barack Obama's presidential inauguration where I focused on styles of speaking between JFK and Obama. I highlighted Sorensen's crucial role in preparing and drafting JFK's seminal Inaugural Adress in 1961.

I am too involved in project work to pen down my own thought and words about my own feelings on the matter of Sorensen's passing. Instead, I refer you to the most excellent eulogy of sorts from the Boston Globe:

Of the courtiers to Camelot's king, Theodore C. Sorensen ranked just below Bobby Kennedy. He was the adoring, tireless speechwriter and confidant to President John F. Kennedy, whose term was marked by Cold War struggles, growing civil rights strife and the beginnings of the U.S. intervention in Vietnam.

Soaring rhetoric helped make Kennedy's presidency a symbol of hope and liberal governance, and the crowning achievement for Sorensen, who died Sunday, was the inaugural address that was the greatest collaboration between the two and set the standard for modern oratory.

With its call for self-sacrifice and civic engagement -- "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" -- and its promise to spare no cost in defending the country's interests worldwide, the address is an uplifting but haunting reminder of national purpose and confidence, before Vietnam, assassinations, Watergate, terrorist attacks and economic shock.

But to the end, Sorensen was a believer.

He was 82 when he died at noon at Manhattan's New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center from complications of a stroke, his widow, Gillian Sorensen, said.

Sorensen had been in poor health in recent years and a stroke in 2001 left him with such poor eyesight that he was unable to write his memoir, "Counselor," published in 2008. Instead, he had to dictate it to an assistant.

President Barack Obama issued a statement saying he was saddened to learn of Sorensen's death.

"His legacy will live on in the words he wrote, the causes he advanced, and the hearts of anyone who is inspired by the promise of a new frontier," Obama said.

Kennedy's daughter, Caroline Kennedy, called Sorensen a "wonderful friend and counselor" for her father and all of her family.

"His partnership with President Kennedy helped bring justice to our country and peace to our world. I am grateful for his guidance, his generosity of spirit and the special time he took to teach my children about their grandfather," she said in a statement.

Hours after his death, Gillian Sorensen told The Associated Press that although a first stroke nine years ago robbed him of much of his sight, "he managed to get back up and going."

She said he continued to give speeches and traveled, and just two weeks ago, he collaborated on the lyrics to music to be performed in January at the Kennedy Center in Washington -- a symphony commemorating a half-century since Kennedy took office.

"I can really say he lived to be 82 and he lived to the fullest and to the last -- with vigor and pleasure and engagement," said Gillian Sorensen, who was at his side to the last. "His mind, his memory, his speech were unaffected."

Her husband was hospitalized Oct. 22 after a second stroke that was "devastating," she said.

Some of Kennedy's most memorable speeches, from his inaugural address to his vow to place a man on the moon, resulted from such close collaborations with Sorensen that scholars debated who wrote what. He had long been suspected as the real writer of the future president's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Profiles in Courage," an allegation Sorensen and the Kennedys emphatically -- and litigiously -- denied.

They were an odd but utterly compatible duo, the glamorous, wealthy politician from Massachusetts and the shy wordsmith from Nebraska, described by Time magazine in 1960 as "a sober, deadly earnest, self-effacing man with a blue steel brain." But as Sorensen would write in "Counselor," the difference in their lifestyles was offset by the closeness of their minds: Each had a wry sense of humor, a dislike of hypocrisy, a love of books and a high-minded regard for public life.

Kennedy called him "my intellectual blood bank" and the press frequently referred to Sorensen as Kennedy's "ghostwriter," especially after the release of "Profiles in Courage." Presidential secretary Evelyn Lincoln saw it another way: "Ted was really more shadow than ghost, in the sense that he was never really very far from Kennedy."

Sorensen's brain of steel was never needed more than in October 1962, with the U.S. and the Soviet Union on the brink of nuclear annihilation over the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba. Kennedy directed Sorensen and Bobby Kennedy, the administration's attorney general, to draft a letter to Nikita Khrushchev, who had sent conflicting messages, first conciliatory, then confrontational.

The carefully worded response -- which ignored the Soviet leader's harsher statements and included a U.S. concession involving U.S. weaponry in Turkey -- was credited with persuading the Soviets to withdraw their missiles from Cuba and with averting war between the superpowers.

Sorensen considered his role his greatest achievement.

"That's what I'm proudest of," he once told the Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald. "Never had this country, this world, faced such great danger. You and I wouldn't be sitting here today if that had gone badly."

Robert Dallek, a historian and the author of "An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963," agreed that Sorensen played a central role in that crisis and throughout the administration.

"He was one of the principal architects of the Kennedy presidency -- in fact, the entire Kennedy career," he said Sunday.

Of the many speeches Sorensen helped compose, Kennedy's inaugural address shone brightest. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations includes four citations from the speech -- one-seventh of the entire address, which built to an unforgettable exhortation: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

Much of the roughly 14-minute speech -- the fourth-shortest inaugural address ever, but in the view of many experts rivaled only by Lincoln's -- was marked by similar sparkling phrase-making:

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

-- "If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."

-- "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate."

As with "Profiles in Courage," Sorensen never claimed primary authorship of the address. Rather, he described speechwriting within Kennedy's White House as highly collaborative -- with JFK a constant kibitzer.

In April 1961, weeks into the Kennedy presidency, the Soviet Union launched the first man into orbit. Less than a month later, Alan Shepard became the first American in space with a 15-minute suborbital flight. The idea of a moon landing "caught my attention, and I knew it would catch Kennedy's," Sorensen recalled. "This is the man who talked about new frontiers. That's what I took to him."

Shortly after Shepard's landmark flight, Kennedy said: "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth." U.S. astronauts met that deadline in July 1969.

Kennedy reinforced the Eisenhower administration's commitment of sending advisers to South Vietnam, but Sorensen maintained that the president, had he not been assassinated, would eventually have withdrawn American troops. Sorensen also believed that the president would have passed the civil rights legislation that successor Lyndon Johnson pushed through.

On the afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963, Sorensen was leaving his home in Arlington, Va., where he had stopped briefly after lunching with a newspaper editor, when he was summoned to the White House.

There, his secretary told him that the president had been shot in Dallas.

"Sometimes," Sorensen told an interviewer in 2006, "I still dream about him."

Sorensen's youthful worship never faded, even as he acknowledged Kennedy's extramarital affairs. "It was wrong, and he knew it was wrong, which is why he went to great lengths to keep it hidden," Sorensen wrote in his memoir. "In every other aspect of his life, he was honest and truthful, especially in his job. His mistakes do not make his accomplishments less admirable; but they were still mistakes."

Sorensen would witness a brief revival of Camelot with the presidential election of Obama, whom Sorensen endorsed "because he is more like John F. Kennedy than any other candidate of our time. He has judgment as he demonstrated in his early opposition to the war in Iraq."

A year after Obama's election, Sorensen said he was disappointed with the president's speeches, saying that Obama was "clearly well informed on all matters of public policy, sometimes, frankly, a little too well informed. And as a result, some of the speeches are too complicated for typical citizens and very clear to university faculties and big newspaper editorial boards."

Theodore Chaikin Sorensen was born in Lincoln, Neb., on May 8, 1928. His father, C.A. Sorensen, was a lawyer and a progressive politician who served as Nebraska's attorney general.

His son described the elder Sorensen as "my first hero." Growing up, Sorensen once joked, "I wasn't involved in politics at all -- until about the age of 4."

He graduated from Lincoln High, the University of Nebraska and the university's law school. At age 24, he explored job prospects in Washington, D.C., and found himself weighing offers from two newly elected senators, Kennedy of Massachusetts and fellow Democrat Henry Jackson, from Washington state.

As Sorensen recalled, Jackson wanted a PR man. Kennedy, considered the less promising politician, wanted Sorensen to poll economists and develop a plan to jump-start New England's economy.

"Two roads diverged in the Old Senate Office Building and I took the one less recommended, and that has made all the difference," Sorensen wrote in his memoir. "The truth is more prosaic: I wanted a good job."

At the 1956 Democratic National Convention, the charismatic Kennedy attracted wide attention as a candidate for vice president. He eventually withdrew, but his exposure at the convention led to a flurry of invitations to speak around the country.

During the next four years -- the de facto beginning of Kennedy's presidential run -- he and Sorensen traveled together to every state, with Sorensen juggling various jobs: scheduler, speechwriter, press rep.

"There was nothing like that three-four year period where, just the two of us, we were traveling across the United States," Sorensen told The Associated Press in 2008. "That's when I got to know the man."

After Kennedy's thousand days in the White House, Sorensen worked as an international lawyer, counting Anwar Sadat among his clients. He stayed involved in politics, joining Bobby Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1968 and running unsuccessfully for the New York Senate four years later. In 1976, President Carter nominated Sorensen for the job of CIA director, but conservative critics quickly killed the nomination, citing -- among other alleged flaws -- his youthful decision to identify himself as a conscientious objector.

Besides "Counselor," his books included "Decision Making in the White House" (1963), "Kennedy" (1965) and "The Kennedy Legacy" (1969). In 2000, Hollywood turned the Cuban missile crisis into a movie called "Thirteen Days." Actor Tim Kelleher played Sorensen.

His role, according to Sorensen? To "think and worry. ... often bent over."

Gillian Sorensen said a public memorial service would be held for her husband in about a month, but the exact date has yet to be set. She said there would be no formal funeral.

Survivors also include a daughter, Juliet Sorensen Jones, of Chicago; three sons from his first marriage, Eric Sorensen, Stephen Sorensen and Philip Sorensen, all of Wisconsin; and seven grandchildren.

Senator Edward Kennedy Dead At 77

In the pantheon of Joseph Kennedy's male children, Edward Moore Kennedy aka Ted Kennedy, was destined to be one of the brightest stars. He was regarded by his politically talented siblings as the natural politician.

Most people know that tragedy has struck that generation of Kennedy's beyond what is acceptable in a normal generational context. Joseph Kennedy Jr. died in an airplane explosion in the course of a mission during waning days of the Second World War. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the President of the U.S. when he was struck down in Dallas, Texas on 22 November 1963. Robert Francis Kennedy was a U.S. Senator for New York and a Presidential aspirant when he, too, was struck down in 1968.

pix from here.

When we include the death of his sister, Kathleen, in an aircrash, we cannot fail to sympathise with the burden that Ted Kennedy must have borne at so many psychological and emotional levels for so many years. For this reason, History must be kind to his memory. Other salient reasons must be for Ted Kennedy's enduring legislative legacy at the U.S. Senate where he championed liberal causes passionately and persuasively for so many years.

So, while I was never enamoured with Ted Kennedy, being more interested in the lives of John F. and Robert F., this is one day where I need to take a moment of silence for the memory of the fourth and, last, living Kennedy brother who has just passed away as Nature intended and, not in the tragic manner that his brothers died.

For a brief, but complete report on Ted Kennedy, check Time's eulogy. But, I will have to say that the most comprehensive coverage was made by the Boston Globe.

Obama and JFK: Inaugural Address

Many people have been rather perplexed over many years by my strong affinity for John Fitzgerald Kennedy. They tend to look at my collection of JFK books and shake their heads and shrug their shoulders in a way that does not suggest in any manner that they understood what the collection is all about. Not that it bothers me in the least bit.

One of the truths about my apparent obsessive-compulsive behaviour towards the various written studies of JFK is rooted in his love of the English language and his awareness of the power of the spoken and written word.

In one of the seminal books on JFK entitled Kennedy, written posthumously by Theodore Sorensen JFK's Personal Assistant and speechwriter extraordinaire, Sorensen had a section that lent a glimpse of the process in which JFK's Presidential Inaugural Address was crafted. It also revealed the thought process that JFK and Sorensen went through in preparing one of the most important speeches an American President can make in his political career. Here's a swatch of Sorensen:

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He (JFK) had first mentioned it (drafting the Inaugural Address) to me in November (1960). He wanted suggestions from everyone. He wanted it short. He wanted it focused on foreign policy. He did not want it to sound partisan, pessimistic or critical of his predecessor. He wanted neither the customary cold war rhetoric about the Communist menace or weasel words that Kruschev (the Soviet leader at the time) might misinterpret. And he wanted it to set a tone for the era about to begin.
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He asked me to read all the past Inaugural Addresses (which I discovered to be a largely undistinguished lot, with some of the best eloquence emanating from some of our worst Presidents). He asked me to study the scret of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (my conclusion, which his Inaugural Address applied, was that Lincoln never used a two- or three-syllable word where a one-syllable word would do).
.......

He was dissatisfied with each attempt to outline domestic goals. It sounded partisan, he said, divisive, too much like the campaign. Finally, he said, "Let's drop the domestic stuff altogether. It's too long anyway." He wanted it to be the shortest in the twentieth century, he said. "It's more effective that way and I don't want people to think I'm a windbag." He couldn't beat FDR's abbreviated wartime remarks in 1944, I said- and he settled for the shortest (less than nineteen hundred words) since 1905.
........

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The next morning, on the patio in sport clothes, he reworked it further. "Let's eliminate all the 'I's," he said. "just say what 'we' will do. You'll have to leave it in about the oath and responsbility, but let's cut everywhere else." The ending, he said, "sounds an awful lot like the ending of the Massachussetts legislature speech, but I guess it's OK." He worked and reworked the "ask not" sentence, with the three campaign speeches containing the same phrase spread out on a low glass table beside him.

The power of JFK's Inaugural Address has lasted for nearly half a century. As recently as 2004, Thurston Clarke wrote an entire book entitled Ask Not, an excellent and well-written work, on the makings of the Inaugural Address. Clarke's thesis was to debunk the myth that JFK did not author the Inaugural Address and, that it was actually written by Sorensen in toto. Clarke establishes that JFK's imprimatur was stamped fully and indelibly on the Inaugural Address.
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Come January 20, the date which is fixed for US Presidential Inaugurations, Obama's Inaugural Address will be delivered.

From the standpoint of oratory, there hasn't been a US President since JFK, quite like President-elect Obama, who can deliver soaring words without sounding silly. Ronald Reagan had a good sonoric voice that he used to good effect with large doses of Hollywood-style one-liner quips. But no one has matched JFK in speech or word, in my humble estimation. Until, Obama.

My only concern is that given the domestic economic maelstrom that now dogs the US, Obama will have to deal with the nuts and bolts issues. But, I suspect, Obama and his speechwriters will be smarter than that. During the best of times or the worst of times, people want to hear soothing words even if they are largely rhetorical.

That is why, in the Malaysian context, Raja Nazrin's speeches almost always bring cheer and inspiration and positive goodwill to the entire spectrum of the Malaysian community each and every time. Although he avoids rhetoric and couches his speech with great intellect and wisdom, Raja Nazrin touches the correct spot every time. He is a savvy public figure in Malaysia with a good reading of the true nature, pulse and aspirations of Malaysians.

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Which leaves us with the anticipation of Obama's forthcoming Inaugural Address. It is something to look forward to. Given his now-famous Acceptance Speech in Chicago, upon being confirmed as President-elect, Obama's Inaugural Address could turn out to be one to remember for the ages to come...at least, I hope so.
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By way of a postscript, I wish to add an image of a painting of President-elect Obama in the famous Kennedy pose above. It's an image done amazingly well by Dan Lacey the Artist (from whose blog I borrowed the image of the JFK painting).

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I want to thank Dan for sharing this Obama-in-Kennedy-repose image with me and, I want to suggest that you click here to visit his blog entitled, Dan Lacey, Painter of Pancakes to savour more of his great works of contemporary art.

Anwar and JFK: Idealists without illusions

John F Kennedy
(1917-1963)

"I cannot single out any one day as the time I began to understand John Kennedy as a human being. gradually I discovered that the simplicity of this man's tastes and demeanour was, while genuine, deceptive as well as disarming. Although he possessed unusual empathy, and a remarkable sense of what was fitting and appropriate for every kind of of occasion, he never put on an act, feigning anger or joy when he did not feel it. Nevertheless his hidden qualities outnumbered the apparent. ...with all his ordinary ways, (he) was an enormously complex and extraordinarily competent man.

I came to marvel at his ability to look at his own strengths and weaknesses with utter detachment, his candid and objective responses to public questions, and his insistence on cutting through prevailing bias and myths to the heart of the problem. He had a disciplined and analytical mind. Even his instincts, which were sound, came from his reason rather than his hunches. He hated no enemy, he wept at no adversity.

But I also learned in time that this cool, analytical mind was stimulated by a warm, compassionate heart. Beneath the careful pragmatic approach lay increasingly deep convictions on basic goals and unusual determination to achieve them."

"As John Buchan wrote of a friend in John Kennedy's favourite book, Pilgrim's Way, "He disliked emotion, not because he felt lightly but because he felt deeply. " John Kennedy could always look at himself objectively and laugh at himself wholeheartedly - and those two rare gifts enabled him to talk lightly while feeling deeply. As he said himself about Robert Frost, "His sense of the human tragedy fortified him against self-deception and easy consolation."

Extracted from Theodore C. Sorensen, KENNEDY (1965)

I don't know Anwar, the man. But at some level, to use John Kennedy's words, he is clearly an idealist without illusions. From where many Malaysians stand, that is far better than the group of politicians running the country at the present time.

Some may be apprehensive about his past politics. But, to his credit, Anwar has acknowledged his past. He has not denied it nor has he attempted to spin it any differently. That is what it is, his past. To hold his past against him would be to deny ourselves a possible and, alternative future trajectory.

What makes the possible alternative future trajectory for Malaysia very compelling is what we are witnessing in the present Malaysia.

If March 8 was a tilting point, then the tipping point may well be the usage of the ISA against RPK, Teresa Kok and Tan Hoon Cheng. Let us not forget the HINDRAF leaders and other ISA detainees. The ISA, as many have reiterated, is an anti-terrorism law crafted at a time when communism was still a threat to Malaysia. Seen from this perspective, how it can even be used against Tan Hoon Cheng, a journalist who was doing her job of reporting the truth, completely beggars belief. To many Malaysians, this single act by the government of the day, is a window into the current future trajectory of Malaysia.

As Malaysians were digesting this indigestible future, we were treated to an ominous reminder of the past and, bleak future by Dr M who wrote this dubious piece. Coming from the ex-PM who had a vision of Bangsa Malaysia and, the man who is going to return to UMNO, many Malaysian hearts have been broken by Dr M's blog article.

That is why now, more so than ever, many Malaysians cling to the alternative vision of the future offered by Anwar Ibrahim. His many detractors question his sincerity. Others, like me, being less sanguine about the future of Malaysia offered by the current government (or Dr M) prefer to give Anwar the benefit of doubt. Anwar, being a man of intelligence, has shown that he has the capacity for learning from bitter experience. The same cannot be said of the politicians running the current government.

This man has been an outsider twice in a three-act dramatic play. In Act I, as an outsider, he was the student leader who became the ABIM leader that led a rainbow coalition of many Malaysian clubs and societies against the Societies Bill in 1981. Act II was his insider UMNO phase.

This is Act III. He is an outsider again, together with the rest of us.
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LATEST UPDATE:

Anwar claims more than 31 MPs will cross over to Pakatan

The Star Online reports at 3.20 pm Sept 16, that, Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has claimed that more than 31 Barisan MPs have agreed to cross over to Pakatan Rakyat.

He, however, refused to reveal the names of the 31 MPs.

Anwar told a press conference at the PKR headquarters in Petaling Jaya on Tuesday that he would give the list of the names to the Prime Minister, when he meets him.

The Permatang Pauh MP also claimed that the transition to the new Government has been delayed a few days pending the meeting with Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to ensure a smooth and peaceful transition.

He said it was up to Abdullah to agree to the meeting and its date.

Anwar said that in a letter submitted to Abdullah on Monday, Pakatan had made four demands to ensure a smooth transition:

1) That Barisan does not hinder or prevent the MPs from acting in accordance with their conscience, constitutional rights and independentjudgement;

2) That the Barisan government should not invoke the Internal Security Act to detain the MPs or any other current Pakatan MPs;

3) That the Barisan government does not invoke emergency laws or police powers or suspend the Constitution or dissolve Parliament; and

4) That the Barisan government shall not impose roadblocks or impede MPs from going to Parliament or any institution of government.

JFK: Democrats' Role Model?

This piece written by Larry Elder is interesting to me at several levels. First, like many people the world over I am following the quadrennial pageantry that the US Presidential Election is - what Americans call razzmatazz. Second, I never fail to be bewildered at how such a ridiculously open and permissive society can reconcile itself with prudery - Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy out-of-wedlock, as if inability to rein in an out-of-control teenage daughter has relevance to whether she has the cojones (metaphorically speaking, of course) to initiate war. Third, this piece highlights the importance of symbols and heroes over the true meaning, substance and context of the symbols and heroes held up for adulation. Fourth, the article deals with JFK.

For the Democrats, it has become almost a religious rite for any presidential aspirant to be anointed and blessed by a connection with JFK. Is it a macabre ritual that honours martyrdom? Or, is it an attempt to rise to the flowing oratorical language and nuance that JFK achieved with the penmanship of Ted Sorensen? Or, maybe it's just that Americans love winners and stars and, JFK is definitely a star 45 years after his assasination. Anyway, this piece deals with the irony that the political and economic plank upon which JFK stood when he was, himself, a presidential aspirant in 1960 and, after he was inaugurated President, is more consonant with present-day Republicanism than it does the Democrats'.

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The John F. Kennedy legacy came up repeatedly during the Democratic National Convention. But today, would JFK even be a Democrat?

Kennedy supported, in today's lexicon, a George W. Bush-like "belligerent" approach to fighting the Cold War, and told CBS' Walter Cronkite it would be "a great mistake" to withdraw the American presence from Vietnam. In his 1961 inaugural speech, Kennedy said, "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

How would such a man feel about fighting today's global peril -- Islamofascism?

Barack Obama likes to point to the 1961 Kennedy-Khrushchev summit to support his desire for meetings "without preconditions" with enemies such as Iran and North Korea.

But Kennedy's secretary of State, Dean Rusk, urged against such a non-conditions-based summit. And later, Kennedy called the summit meeting the "roughest thing in my life. (Khrushchev) just beat the hell out of me. I've got a terrible problem if he thinks I'm inexperienced and have no guts." Indeed, Khrushchev thought Kennedy a weak amateur. Following the summit, Khrushchev built the Berlin Wall and placed missiles in Cuba, an action that led the world to the brink of nuclear conflict.

Kennedy believed in cutting taxes -- deeply and dramatically. Before Kennedy's tax cuts, the top marginal tax rate stood at over 90 percent, and Kennedy -- albeit after his assassination -- got it reduced to 70 percent, a much greater percentage reduction than did Bush. Kennedy, in a 1962 speech before the Economic Club of New York said, "It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now. The experience of a number of European countries and Japan have borne this out. This country's own experience with tax reduction in 1954 has borne this out. And the reason is that only full employment can balance the budget, and tax reduction can pave the way to that employment. The purpose of cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy, which can bring a budget surplus."

In January 1963, Kennedy addressed Congress: "Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased -- not a reduced -- flow of revenues to the federal government." Several days later, JFK sent another message to Congress: "Our tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for risk, investment and effort -- thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling our national growth rate."

In a televised national address just two months before his assassination, Kennedy broke it down: "A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget. Every taxpayer and his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new car, a new home, new conveniences, education and investment. Every businessman can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put it to work expanding or improving his business, and as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues."

Kennedy, unlike Obama, opposed race-based preferences. In a 1963 interview, Kennedy expected blacks to resist a call for preferential treatment: "The Negro community did not want job quotas to compensate for past discrimination. What I think they would like is to see their children well educated, so that they could hold jobs ... and have themselves accepted as equal members of the community. ... I don't think we can undo the past. In fact, the past is going to be with us for a good many years in uneducated men and women who lost their chance for a decent education. We have to do the best we can now. That is what we are trying to do."

Kennedy also objected to assigning positions or granting promotions based on what today's advocates call underrepresentation: "I think it is a mistake to begin to assign quotas on the basis of religion or race -- color -- nationality. ... On the other hand, I do think that we ought to make an effort to give a fair chance to everyone who is qualified -- not through a quota -- but just look over our employment rolls, look over our areas where we are hiring people and at least make sure we are giving everyone a fair chance. But not hard and fast quotas. ... We are too mixed, this society of ours, to begin to divide ourselves on the basis of race or color."

So when the haze disappears, what remains? A man of limited government, low taxes and strong national defense who rejected a government-led redistribution of wealth.

In other words, someone who would today fit very comfortably in the party -- the Republican Party.