US Presidency
1962

It is not new that past debates should obscure present realities. But the damage of such a false dialogue is greater today than ever before simply because today the safety of all the world, the very future of freedom, depends as never before upon the sensible and clearheaded management of the domestic affairs of the United States. The real issues of our time are rarely as dramatic as the issues of Calhoun. The differences today are usually matters of degree. And we can not understand and attack our contemporary problems in 1962 if we are bound by traditional labels and worn out slogans of an earlier era. But the unfortunate fact of the matter is that our rhetoric has not kept pace with the speed of social and economic change. Our political debates, our public discourse, on current domestic and economic issues, too often bear little or no relation to the actual problems the United States faces.