Sorensen's journey took him to White House
By Larry Lunnin
J Alumni News staff
Ted Sorensen isn't afraid to be called a liberal.
That is, of course, if liberal means what the adviser to former President John F. Kennedy says it is supposed to mean.
"Liberal is a term some people badly define," the 75-year-old Sorensen said. Liberals don't always call for excessive government control; they don't necessarily want weak national security; they are not soft on crime, he said.
"Liberal doesn't mean hippie," Sorensen said. "It doesn't even mean radical."
So then what does liberal mean to Sorensen?
His sense of what it means to be a liberal reflects the progressive nature of his Nebraska role models like Sen. George W. Norris and his father, C.A. Sorensen, who served as state attorney general in the 1920s and 1930s.
Or the late JFK, a true liberal, he said.
Being liberal "means having an open mind," Sorensen said.
Although Sorensen is, admittedly, conservative in his personal habits, he said he wouldn't lose any sleep if a grandchild came home with a new eyebrow or tongue piercing.
"I'm not against it," he said.
It is that mindset that earned Sorensen a ticket from Lincoln Public Schools to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to the UNL Law College and, eventually, to the White House.
"In some ways I feel like I never left town," Sorensen said.
In an appearance at the College of Journalism and Mass Communi-cations J Days honors ceremony, Sorensen recalled his family's incredible journey from the sod house in which his grandfather grew up.
From sod house to statehouse" in a matter of generations, he said.
With sound bites like that it may be no wonder that COJMC Dean Will Norton called Sorensen "one of three great speech writers in history." Abraham Lincoln and Williams Jennings Bryan are the other two, he said.
"Two came from Lincoln, and we named the city after the other one," Norton said.
Sorensen's famous speeches, including the words uttered by JFK at his inauguration - "Ask not what your country can do for you ..." - have materialized from the stories Sorensen tells day-to-day about his experiences, according to Barbara Burbach, one of Sorensen's former associates.
"He's a wonderful storyteller," she said.
Working with Sorensen at the international law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison gave Burbach the chance to learn some of those stories.
"He's really a walking history book, too, because most of his stories are true," she said.
Sorensen recalled working for JFK before the Democratic candidate was scheduled to debate Richard Nixon during the 1960 presidential campaign. This was to be the first televised, live debate.
Thinking ahead, a quality Sorensen said is common to progressives, came into play as the candidates prepared for the debate.Hoping to look good on television - and leery of wearing makeup in front of the cameras - Kennedy spent time before the debate tanning on a rooftop in Chicago. Sorensen was with him.
But their time on a rooftop was more than just a tanning session, Sorensen said. Kennedy insisted on being meticulously prepared for everything and anything that could happen.
So there they sat, sweltering on the rooftop: Kennedy, Sorensen and a huge stack of note cards.
On the note cards, advisers had prepared every possible question they thought journalists could ask; they had taken stands on the big issues; they reviewed just exactly how Kennedy had voted as a senator.
Then Kennedy retired to study on his own. Sorensen said he later went to check on the future president and found him fast asleep, surrounded by a clutter of note cards.
Kennedy and many others credit Sorensen for his role in JFK's underdog campaign for president, but Sorensen insists he was only helping to make the great greater.
In a phone interview, Sorensen said he didn't like to talk about himself too much.
One time JFK gave Sorensen a little more credit than Sorensen thought he deserved, he said.
"It embarrasses me a little bit," he said.
As he described it, Sorensen is a little bit "old school," meaning he doesn't take credit for himself if that means taking credit away from the boss.
But on stage, things are different. At the J Days honors convocation in April, where he received the Kappa Tau Alpha Outstanding Service Award, Sorensen capitalized on praise-filled introductions by Norton and UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman.
"My mother would have been proud," he said. "And my father would have believed it."
