Promises to Keep: A Call for a New American Revolution

by Richard N. Goodwin

There is in America today a palpable discontent with politics as usual. Apprehension over the nation's future abounds. Unhappiness with the quality of leadership is everywhere to be seen: from the insurgent campaigns of H. Ross Perot to conservative pundit Patrick Buchanan to former California governor Jerry Brown. The search for a vision of politics that might galvanize the electorate has sparked the most volatile presidential race in decades. In this eloquent and provocative manifesto, early versions of which influenced the thinking of several of the presidential candidates, Richard Goodwin provides the broad outline of an agenda for change. One of America's most respected and experienced critics and activists, having advised both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Goodwin combines a sense of history with a commitment to contemporary concerns rare among political analysts. Promises to Keep contends that the political crisis of our time is far deeper than most politicians realize. Nothing less than a breakdown of American society is in process. Modern politics, Goodwin argues, is riddled with the twin corruptions of money and faction. Both the Democratic and Republican parties, as well as the Congress and the executive branch, have fallen under the sway of special interests--at the expense of the nation and its capacity to create wealth and social justice. Washington is also cut off from the realities impinging on most Americans. Government is paralyzed. The consequence has been a betrayal of the American dream. Promises to Keep proposes a new political movement--outside the present political process--to restore what Goodwin calls "democratic capitalism." He succinctly outlines the movement's objectives and its ultimate goal: to compel political leaders once again to serve the interest of the entire American people. He takes a new and sober look at the potential and limitations of political action itself, and offers a penetrating reappraisal of the process of gov

177 pages, Hardcover

First published August 18, 1992

About the author

Richard Goodwin was born in Boston on 7th December, 1931. He graduated from Tufts University in 1953. He then went on to study law at Harvard University.

Goodwin joined the Massachusetts State bar in 1958. He worked for Felix Frankfurter before being appointed as special counsel to the Legislative Oversight Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 1959 John F. Kennedy appointed Goodwin as a member of his speech writing staff. The following year he became Kennedy's assistant special counsel. Goodwin was also a member of Kennedy's Task Force on Latin American Affairs and in 1961, was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, a position he held until 1963. As one of Kennedy's specialists in Latin-American affairs, Goodwin helped develop the Alliance for Progress, an economic development program for Latin America. Goodwin also served as secretary-general of the International Peace Corps.

After Kennedy's death Goodwin joined the staff of President Lyndon B. Johnson where he worked as a speechwriter and adviser. Goodwin resigned in 1965 and became a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut and a visiting professor of public affairs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Goodwin continued to be involved in politics and wrote speeches for presidential candidates Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy and Edmund Muskie. He also wrote for several magazines, including The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. He also published The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys (1986) and Remembering America (1988).

In March, 2001, Goodwin was a member of a United States delegation that visited the scene of the Bay of Pigs battle. The party included Arthur Schlesinger (historian), Robert Reynolds, (the CIA station chief in Miami during the invasion), Jean Kennedy Smith (sister of John F. Kennedy), Alfredo Duran (Bay of Pigs veteran) and Wayne S. Smith (Executive Secretary of his Latin American Task Force).