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If You Want To Run For President, Write A Bestselling Book First
For the link between political success and bestseller status, look to Lincoln, JFK, and Obama
Jack Kennedy didn’t need to worry — not like this, at least. When the National Book Awards announced that the senator would deliver the keynote address at its 1956 ceremony, the book trade hummed with excitement. The awards had an aura of glamour: the Commodore Hotel in midtown Manhattan, the tables piled high with cocktails and canapés. But Kennedy was actually glamorous. He’d be easy to spot among the older, dowdier authors. In fact, John F. Kennedy, 38 years old, hair brushed back, slim suit buttoned, would be the biggest star in the room. Besides, it was just a speech. The senator had given plenty of those.
And yet sitting there, looking at his draft, Kennedy continued to fret. He knew he had to deliver the keynote in front of America’s best writers. (The nominees that year included Flannery O’Connor, Richard Hofstadter, W. H. Auden, and Eudora Welty.) Then again, he was a writer himself — and, lately, a very successful one. His Profiles in Courage had just started its multiyear run on the bestseller lists. The book singled out eight senators who, at key times in American history, had demonstrated true courage, and reviewers were spotting that same…
