Profiles in Courage is a book associated with John F. Kennedy that recurs as a reference point in several episodes of The Bob Zadek Show. Guests and the host invoke it in discussions of impeachment, executive emergency powers, and broadcast regulation, and the excerpts also record a dispute over its authorship.
Impeachment and the Senate
In a discussion of impeachment as a structural check on presidential power, Frank H. Buckley told Bob Zadek that John F. Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage to celebrate the one senator who switched his vote to save the presidency. Buckley said the reality was that the man was bribed and that Kennedy did not write the book—Ted Sorensen did. He made these remarks while explaining that removal from office requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate, and that only once in American history had a president of one party faced a Senate and House controlled by the other party, in 1868. Zadek identified that president as Andrew Johnson. Buckley said he would have preferred a simple majority and noted that Gouverneur Morris was the one who slipped the two-thirds requirement by the Framers, describing Morris as the unknown genius, perhaps the smartest man in the room next to Franklin, who twiddled James Madison around his finger. Buckley also recalled that the vote to remove in the Senate during the Clinton impeachment was 50-50, and that but for the last-minute change from a simple majority to two-thirds, Al Gore would have cast the deciding vote. Has America Become an “Elective Monarchy”? (2014)
John Rothmann, in a later episode, gave a different account of the same historical episode. He said the charges against Andrew Johnson were fundamentally based on the Tenure of Office Act, which Congress passed in order to get him, and that Johnson was saved by one vote—the vote of Edmund Ross of Kansas—which, Rothmann said, one can read about in John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage. Rothmann’s broader argument was that a crime is not necessary for impeachment. He cited Gerald Ford, then House Minority Leader, who, asked about the impeachment of Justice William O. Douglas, said impeachment is whatever the House of Representatives says it is. Rothmann said one can impeach someone if you have the votes and convict in the Senate if you have the votes, regardless of the merits, and that the process is political in every sense of the word. He said he believed Donald Trump abused his power and showed contempt of Congress, but that it only becomes a removable-from-office crime if the senators vote that way. He also noted that Alan Dershowitz would argue in the Senate that the president’s action does not rise to the level for which he should be removed. Withholding Judgment on Impeachment with John Rothmann (2020)
Emergency Powers and the Reluctance to Relinquish Them
In an episode on what he called the mini-administrative state, Zadek asked Glenn Roper whether any governor or mayor had ever voluntarily ended an emergency declaration once the legislature had had time to act, comparing such a step to George Washington handing over his sword at the end of the war and returning to be a planter in Virginia. Roper said he was not aware of such an instance and that there are too few people who model their service after George Washington. He noted that Governor DeSantis in Florida and Governor Abbott in Texas had taken what he considered a more measured approach, but that he could not think of an example of an executive rescinding orders on the ground that the legislature had had enough time. Roper said this highlights why checks and balances are needed, citing James Madison on ambition and the incentive to aggregate power, and why a strong, robust separation of powers matters. The Mini-Administrative State (2020)
Zadek then said the question had been loaded and that he had been sandbagging Roper, because there is no such instance—power is almost never voluntarily released and ceded back, only under great pressure. He said he recalled that at the federal level there are something in the low 20s of existing states of emergency going back 20 or 30 years, and that such emergencies create unusual accumulations of power during a temporary crisis but never go away because it is too good for government. He proposed giving a free copy of Profiles in Courage to the first governor who voluntarily told the legislature to do its job, saying it is simply not the governor’s job and that out of respect for good government alone the legislature should do its work. Zadek said that has not happened and that it is interesting to watch whether it ever will. He then turned to the arbitrariness that follows unchecked power, citing the distinction between essential and non-essential businesses as almost laughable. Roper described a case Pacific Legal Foundation is litigating in Connecticut, where the governor issued orders drawing arbitrary distinctions about which businesses could reopen. Their client, Luis Ramirez, owns a nail salon; the governor allowed hair salons to reopen but not nail salons. Roper said the governor and his health and economic officials had categorized nail salons and hair salons as having the same risk profile, then drew a distinction anyway with no reason or justification. Ramirez, Roper said, had spent some of his own dwindling funds on precautions such as masking and distancing. Roper said the state moved to dismiss the complaint and the parties were briefing that, and that the state could not make the distinction because it had already issued risk profiles grouping nail and hair salons together—it was a naked exercise of arbitrary power. The Mini-Administrative State (2020)
Broadcast Regulation and the Fairness Doctrine
In an episode on The Radio Right and the Fairness Doctrine, Zadek framed the show’s theme as beware of fair, calling fair a scary word by which those holding political power hide and a safe place for politicians to bury the most unfair of laws and policies. He said the show would explore how the Kennedy and Johnson administrations weaponized the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine to silence conservative broadcasters, and that the discussion would touch on the historical origins of broadcast licensing, the public interest standard, and parallels between mid-century radio regulation and modern attempts to control speech on the internet. The Radio Right and The Fairness Doctrine (2021)
Zadek introduced his guest, Paul Matzko, as a historian, a graduate of Penn State with a PhD in history, a student of recent American history, and a contributor to Libertarianism.org, sponsored by Cato. Zadek said Matzko’s book is The Radio Right, with the subtext How a Band of Broadcasters Took on the Federal Government and Built the Modern Conservative Movement, and described it as the most readable history/political book he had ever come across. Zadek said the show would go back to the early days of radio and center on JFK, president from 1960 to 1963, and that Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage. Zadek said listeners would learn that a lot of the characters discussed in Matzko’s book could be in a sequel called Profiles in Cowardice, including perhaps JFK himself. The Radio Right and The Fairness Doctrine (2021)
Across episodes
The book appears in three episodes spanning 2014 to 2021, and the treatment changes in emphasis rather than in argument. In the 2014 episode, Buckley pairs Profiles in Courage with the claim that Kennedy did not write it and that the senator it celebrates was bribed, using the book to argue for a simple majority rather than a two-thirds threshold for Senate removal. In the 2020 impeachment episode, Rothmann cites the same book for the same historical episode—Edmund Ross’s vote saving Andrew Johnson—but without the authorship dispute, and uses it to support the position that a crime is not necessary for impeachment. In the 2020 episode on emergency powers, Zadek proposes giving away copies of the book to any governor who voluntarily returns power to a legislature, and in the 2021 episode he again attributes the book to Kennedy while suggesting a sequel titled Profiles in Cowardice. The excerpts show no development in the underlying claims about the book; they show it being put to different rhetorical uses.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state when Profiles in Courage was published, what it contained beyond the Edmund Ross episode, or what became of the authorship question after Buckley’s remark. They do not say whether the book was discussed on any other episode of the show, nor do they give the outcome of the Connecticut litigation or of the impeachment proceedings Rothmann discussed. The excerpts also do not state the fate of the Fairness Doctrine or of the governors’ emergency declarations mentioned in the 2020 episode.