LONDON -- Ted Sorensen knew John F. Kennedy like few others.

As JFK's trusted aide and speechwriter from 1953 (when Kennedy was a senator) until his assassination in 1963, Sorensen worked so closely with the late U.S. president that he was dubbed "the deputy president" and "Kennedy's intellectual alter ego."

And when asked to choose his most significant memory of those pivotal days, Sorensen is direct and to-the-point.

"You and I wouldn't be here if JFK had not been president at the time of the Cuban missile crisis," he says.

Sorensen, now 81 and visually impaired by a stroke he suffered in 2001, visited London yesterday to deliver a special lecture at the University of Western Ontario and promote his recent book, Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History.

During those tumultuous days in the fall of 1962 (which historians have called "the most dangerous 13 days in the history of mankind"), Sorensen drafted a crucial letter to Soviet president Nikita Khrushchev -- a letter that ultimately helped diffuse the potentially explosive situation.

"How could it be that the fate of the world rested on a 34-year-old kid from Nebraska?" asks Sorensen during an interview at the Hotel Hilton. "That's my favourite episode in the Kennedy career. But I don't want to see a repeat, because the world was on the brink of destruction."

Sorensen says things might have turned out quite differently if Richard Nixon had defeated Kennedy in the presidential election campaign of 1960.

"In that same fall of 1962, when Kennedy showed the kind of patience, discipline and wisdom that I mentioned (in the book) and resolved the Cuban missile crisis without firing a shot, Nixon was having a self-destructive campaign for governor of California," he says. "Imagine if he had been in the White House and faced with the challenge that faced Kennedy?"

An eloquent wordsmith who helped craft some of Kennnedy's most inspirational phrases (including "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."), Sorensen says he regrets the current decline in language, literacy and communication, which he characterizes as "a lot of name-calling and falsehood-hurling."

"The national discourse in my country has declined," he says. "It has become more partisan, it has become more bitter, it is often shouting at the top of one's voice.

"In his inaugural address, John F. Kennedy said, 'Civility is not a sign of weakness,'" recalls Sorensen. "That's a very important principle. Unfortunately, it's being ignored by members of both parties . . . who cast about insults and untruths."

Sorensen concedes the U.S. seethes with cynicism, but he remains optimistic.

"There's a certain amount of resentment now in some places and pockets in the United States," he says. "They don't like the fact that a black man is president. They don't like the fact that a liberal Democrat is president. They don't like the fact that we have allies and foreign-aid programs.

"So that kind of resentment, cynicism and suspicion will never be eliminated entirely," he says. "But I think Obama has made headway."

ian.gillespie@sunmedia.ca