Theodore Sorensen

Theodore Sorensen, who was John F. Kennedy's speechwriter and one of his closest advisers, approves of the speech Barack Obama delivered yesterday to 200,000 Germans in front of the Victory Column in Tiergarten.

"I thought it was a magnificent, historic speech," said Sorensen, who helped draft Kennedy's famous 1963 "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech. "It was a comprehensive declaration of new American foreign policy which will close the chapter on the nightmares of the last seven and a half years and hold out hope for sensible Europeans that America will once again be a collaborator."

Asked how Obama's speech echoed Kennedy's decades earlier, with its tone and repetitive references to freedom and Berlin, Sorensen said, "Of course there are parallels between two, young, aggressive internationalist-minded Democrats speaking in that historic place.  read more »