I have commented on the state of the domestic economy, our balance of
payments, our Federal and social budget and the state of the world. I would
like to conclude with a few remarks about the state of the Executive
branch. We have found it full of honest and useful public servants--but
their capacity to act decisively at the exact time action is needed has too
often been muffled in the morass of committees, timidities and fictitious
theories which have created a growing gap between decision and execution,
between planning and reality. In a time of rapidly deteriorating situations
at home and abroad, this is bad for the public service and particularly bad
for the country; and we mean to make a change.
I have pledged myself and my colleagues in the cabinet to a continuous
encouragement of initiative, responsibility and energy in serving the
public interest. Let every public servant know, whether his post is high or
low, that a man's rank and reputation in this Administration will be
determined by the size of the job he does, and not by the size of his
staff, his office or his budget. Let it be clear that this Administration
recognizes the value of dissent and daring--that we greet healthy
controversy as the hallmark of healthy change. Let the public service be a
proud and lively career. And let every man and woman who works in any area
of our national government, in any branch, at any level, be able to say
with pride and with honor in future years: "I served the United States
government in that hour of our nation's need."
For only with complete dedication by us all to the national interest can we
bring our country through the troubled years that lie ahead. Our problems
are critical. The tide is unfavorable. The news will be worse before it is
better. And while hoping and working for the best, we should prepare
ourselves now for the worst.
We cannot escape our dangers--neither must we let them drive us into panic
or narrow isolation. In many areas of the world where the balance of power
already rests with our adversaries, the forces of freedom are sharply
divided. It is one of the ironies of our time that the techniques of a
harsh and repressive system should be able to instill discipline and ardor
in its servants--while the blessings of liberty have too often stood for
privilege, materialism and a life of ease.
But I have a different view of liberty.
Life in 1961 will not be easy. Wishing it, predicting it, even asking for
it, will not make it so. There will be further setbacks before the tide is
turned. But turn it we must. The hopes of all mankind rest upon us--not
simply upon those of us in this chamber, but upon the peasant in Laos, the
fisherman in Nigeria, the exile from Cuba, the spirit that moves every man
and Nation who shares our hopes for freedom and the future. And in the
final analysis, they rest most of all upon the pride and perseverance of
our fellow citizens of the great Republic.
In the words of a great President, whose birthday we honor today, closing
his final State of the Union Message sixteen years ago, "We pray that we
may be worthy of the unlimited opportunities that God has given us."
***
State of the Union Address
John F. Kennedy
January 11, 1962
Mr. Vice President, my old colleague from Massachusetts and your new
Speaker, John McCormack, Members of the 87th Congress, ladies and
gentlemen:
This week we begin anew our joint and separate efforts to build the
American future. But, sadly, we build without a man who linked a long past
with the present and looked strongly to the future. "Mister Sam" Rayburn is
gone. Neither this House nor the Nation is the same without him.
Members of the Congress, the Constitution makes us not rivals for power but
partners for progress. We are all trustees for the American people,
custodians of the American heritage. It is my task to report the State of
the Union--to improve it is the task of us all.
In the past year, I have traveled not only across our own land but to
other lands--to the North and the South, and across the seas. And I have
found--as I am sure you have, in your travels--that people everywhere,
in spite of occasional disappointments, look to us--not to our wealth or
power, but to the splendor of our ideals. For our Nation is commissioned
by history to be either an observer of freedom's failure or the cause of
its success. Our overriding obligation in the months ahead is to fulfill
the world's hopes by fulfilling our own faith.