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| ANALYZING AN INAUGURAL SPEECH Biography of Kennedy Speech Writer, |
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Clinton's 1st
Inaugural Address:
On a mild January day, William Jefferson Clinton delivered one of the shortest speeches of his career - only 14 minutes long - to celebrate his inauguration. It began with the words:
Today we celebrate the mystery of American renewal. This ceremony is held in the depth of winter. But, by the words we speak and the faces we show the world, we force the spring.
Links
A complete collection of Presidential Inaugural Speeches
The 53rd Presidential Inaugural Web Site
Presidential libraries and archives
Character Above All,
a NewsHour special, analyzed Presidential character in the 20th Century
Theodore C. Sorensen, served for 11 years as policy advisor and Legal Counsel to Senator and then President John F. Kennedy, and was deeply involved in such matters as the Cuban Missile Crisis, civil rights legislation, and the decision to go to the moon. Since 1966, Sorensen has been a senior partner the prominent New York law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, where his practice focuses on international business and governmental transactions in all parts of the world. His work has taken him to more than 65 countries and he has met with over 50 heads of government and state. Former Chairman of the firm's International Practice Committee, Sorensen is a member of the bar in New York, Nebraska, the District of Columbia and the United States Supreme Court. He serves on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations, The Twentieth Century Fund (Chairman), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, and The New York Academy of Medicine, and in 1995 was appointed by President Clinton to the Board of the Central Asian-American Enterprise Fund (covering Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan).
Ted Sorensen is the author of the 1965 book Kennedy; an international best seller, "Why I Am A Democrat," (Henry Holt, 1996); and six other books on the presidency, politics or foreign policy. He has written numerous articles on those subjects for Foreign Affairs magazine, The New York Times, and other publications. He has lectured widely in the U.S. and abroad to business, academic, military, political, religious and other audiences. He has participated in nine of the last eleven Democratic Party National Conventions, and served in a number of governmental, political and civic posts, including the 1992 Carnegie Commission on the organization of U.S. foreign policy decision-making.
Mr. Sorensen, born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1928, graduated from the University of Nebraska and its College of Law in 1951 (Phi Beta Kappa, first in his class, Order of Coif and Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review), and has received honorary doctorates from five universities. The father of four children, he is married to Gillian Martin Sorensen, a former New York City Commissioner, who is Special Advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations with the rank of Under Secretary.
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