Opinion

Obama campaign revives visions of Kennedy
By Pat Casey/Guest Columnist

Is Barack H. Obama a new John F. Kennedy? In many intriguing ways, I (along with Sen. Edward Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, who endorsed him this February) think he is.

Even though more than half our population was born after JFK’s assassination, it’s remarkable how much Americans of all ages continue to revere him. A 2007 Gallup poll ranked him our third-best president, ahead of Washington, Jefferson and both Roosevelts. No matter that his presidential accomplishments may have been few, and regardless of what unsavory details about his life emerge, JFK’s positive image endures. He was especially inspirational to the youth of his day – just ask the millions of Baby Boomers who acted on his exhortation to “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,” or look at how many — such as William Jefferson Clinton, then a high school student in Hope, Ark. — took up elective politics because of his influence.

Not surprisingly, politicians since Kennedy’s day have tried to capture this magic, especially his knack for making politics honorable and exciting to the young (or at least getting them to vote). Political observers haven’t seen this much excitement among the young for a presidential candidate since Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy ran in 1968. George McGovern had a sizable youth following in 1972, but then began a long decline in young voter participation in presidential politics.

As a college-age voter myself in the 1980s, I saw Ronald Reagan stir interest among the young, as did Bill Clinton in the 1990s — but both considerably less than what I’ve seen Obama accomplish during this campaign.

Other parallels stand out as well. Both JFK and Obama are intriguing combinations of establishment and outsider: Kennedy a Harvard-educated, wealthy Massachusetts senator but also an Irish Catholic; Obama a Columbia and Harvard-educated, comfortably well-off Illinois senator but also the son of an interracial marriage and largely reared by a single parent. Their origins helped them confront widely held but often unspoken prejudices of their time: Kennedy with his famous speech to a group of Protestant ministers in 1960, where he noted that his Catholic faith had been no barrier to his service in the Navy during World War II, so why should it keep him out of the presidency; and Obama in Philadelphia this March when he used the firestorm stirred by Rev. Jeremiah Wright to confront our painful history of slavery and racism.

Largely because of Kennedy, anti-Catholicism is now a dead issue in American politics. History will tell if Obama will be able to bury racism in politics — this will, of course, take more than a single speech, or even an Obama presidency, but he has voiced many previously unmentionable questions about race in America which will at least get the conversation going.

Another similarity is how both Kennedy and Obama burst upon the national scene as virtual unknowns, without a significant legislative record behind them. (JFK had been a congressman and senator for 14 years by 1960 but had little to show for it; Obama only arrived in the U.S. Senate four years ago). Both turned these potential shortcomings into strengths by running campaigns successfully promising hope for the future rather than a meditation about their past – they managed to convince voters the country needed change (which they could offer) more than the experience their opponents had.

One final similarity is that both give good speeches sprinkled with historical references and soaring rhetoric. I wonder if Obama will be able to resist echoing JFK’s famous “The torch is passed to a new generation of Americans . . .” phrase in his inaugural address next January!

– Pat Casey is an MHCC history instructor and co-chairperson of the Historians’ Roundtable.