[Dialogue] {Disarmed} Is Barack Obama the next JFK?

[FacilitationFla at aol.com]

Is  Barack Obama the next JFK? 
Heir Time
by Ted  Sorensen 
Post date:  07.19.07; Issue date: 07.23.07  
At first glance, the Democratic  nominee for president in 1960, John 
Fitzgerald Kennedy--the millionaire  Caucasian war hero for whom I worked for eleven 
golden years--seems notably  different from the most interesting candidate for 
next year's nomination,  Senator Barack Obama. But when does a difference make 
a difference? Different  times, issues, and electors make any meaningful 
comparison unlikely. But the  parallels in their candidacies are striking. 
Fifty years ago, Kennedy and I embarked on a period in which I traveled  to 
all 50 states in his long, uphill quest for the 1960 Democratic presidential  
nomination. He was, like Obama, a first-term U.S.  senator. But he was not yet 
40 years old, making Obama, already 45, a geezer by  comparison. 
At the time, Washington pundits assumed Kennedy had at  least two 
insurmountable obstacles. The first was his lack of experience,  especially compared with 
the senior statesmen also seeking that nomination--  Lyndon Johnson, Hubert 
Humphrey, Adlai Stevenson, and Stuart Symington. Kennedy  acknowledged that his 
age and inexperience would turn away some voters. Obama,  though older than 
Kennedy, is similarly dismissed by some today. But Kennedy  noted in one speech 
that "experience is like tail-lights on a boat which  illuminate where we 
have been when we should be focusing on where we should be  going." 
Kennedy's second major obstacle was  his heritage. Some said he had lost his 
chance to be president of the  United  States the day he was born--or, at 
least, the  day he was baptized as a Roman Catholic. No Catholic had ever been 
elected  president of the United  States, and the overwhelming defeat suffered by 
the only  Catholic nominated for that position, Governor Al Smith of New York 
in 1928, had  persuaded subsequent Democratic leaders that it would be 
hopeless ever to risk  that route again. The conviction that no Catholic could win 
was greater, in that  less enlightened era 50 years ago, than the widespread 
assumption today that a  black presidential candidate cannot win. The subtly 
bigoted phrase most often  repeated in that election year--by former President 
Harry Truman, among  others--was that 1960 was "too early" for a Catholic 
president, that the country  was "not ready," and that Kennedy should be a "good 
sport" by settling for the  vice presidency. No doubt Obama will hear--or has 
already heard--similar  sentiments about the color of his skin. 
Even some Catholic religious leaders--who  thought Kennedy was not Catholic 
enough, having attended secular schools and  expressed disagreement with the 
Catholic hierarchy on church-state  separation--opposed his candidacy. So did 
some Catholic political leaders who  thought his candidacy might raise unwanted 
controversies or produce an unwanted  rival to their own positions (much as Al 
Sharpton and Vernon Jordan may not  initially welcome an Obama candidacy). 
But, in time, Kennedy's speeches and  interviews strongly favoring traditional 
church-state separation reassured all  but the most bigoted anti-Catholics. In 
the end, despite his ethnic handicap,  Kennedy proved to be less divisive than 
his major opponent, fellow senator  Hubert Humphrey. Obama may prove the 
same. 
In addition to their similar  handicaps, Kennedy and Obama share an 
extraordinary number of parallels. Both  men were Harvard-educated. Both rose to 
national attention almost overnight as  the result of starring roles at the 
nationally televised Democratic convention  preceding their respective candidacies: 
Kennedy in 1956, when he delivered the  speech nominating Stevenson and 
subsequently came close to winning an open-floor  struggle for the vice presidential 
nomination with Estes Kefauver; Obama in  2004, by virtue of his brilliant 
speech to the convention that year in Boston.   
Both also gained national acclaim  through their best-selling inspirational 
books--Kennedy's Profiles in  Courage, published in 1956, and Obama's The 
Audacity of Hope,  published in 2006. Both men immediately stood out as young, 
handsome, and  eloquent new faces who attracted and excited ever larger and 
younger crowds at  the grassroots level, a phenomenon that initially went almost 
unnoticed by  Washington  leaders and experts too busy interviewing  themselves. 
Kennedy's speeches in early 1960  and even earlier, like Obama's in early 
2007, were not notable for their  five-point legislative plans. Rather, they 
focused on several common themes:  hope, a determination to succeed despite the 
odds, dissatisfaction with the  status quo, and confidence in the judgment of 
the American people. In sprinkling  their remarks with allusions to history and 
poetry, neither talked down to the  American people. JFK was so frank about 
his disagreements with the leadership of  his Catholic "base" that one Catholic 
journal editorialized against him; Obama  was equally frank and courageous 
with the Democrats' organized labor base in  assessing the competitive prospects 
of the American auto industry in Detroit. Both were  unsparing in their 
references to the "revolving door" culture in Washington. 
On foreign policy, both emphasized  the importance of multilateral demo- 
cracy, national strength as a guardian of  peace, and the need to restore 
America's global standing, moral  authority, and leadership. Both warned of the 
dangers of war: Kennedy motivated  by his own harsh experience in World War II, 
Obama by his familiarity with  suffering in all parts of the world. Both were 
cerebral rather than emotional  speakers, relying on the communication of values 
and hope rather than cheap  applause lines. 
Perhaps most tellingly, both  preached (and personified) the politics of hope 
in contrast to the politics of  fear, which characterized Republican speeches 
during their respective eras. In  1960 and earlier, cynics and pessimists 
accepted the ultimate inevitability of  nuclear war between the United  States 
and the Soviet  Union, much as today they assume a fruitless and unending war  
against terrorism. Hope trumped fear in 1960, and I have no doubt that it will  
again in 2008. 
Although President Kennedy became  the breakthrough president on civil 
rights, health care, and other liberal  issues, he was not the most liberal 
candidate for the nomination in 1960. His  emphasis on the importance of ethics, moral 
courage, and a multilateral foreign  policy made him--like Obama--hard to 
pigeonhole with a single ideological label.  His insistence that the United 
States "must do better" in every sphere of  activity, including its cold war 
competition with the Soviet Union, caused some  historians to mistakenly recall that 
he "ran to the right" of Richard Nixon on  national security issues, 
forgetting his emphasis on negotiations and peaceful  solutions.  
JFK's establishment opponents--  probably not unlike Obama's--did not 
understand Kennedy's appeal. "Find out his  secret," LBJ instructed one of his aides 
sent to spy on the Kennedy camp, "his  strategy, his weaknesses, his comings 
and goings." Ultimately, Kennedy was both  nominated and elected, not by 
secretly outspending or out-gimmicking his  opponents but by outworking and 
out-thinking them, especially by attracting  young volunteers and first-time voters. 
Most of Kennedy's opponents, like  Obama's, were fellow senators--Johnson, 
Humphrey, and Symington--who initially  dismissed him as neither a powerhouse on 
the Senate floor nor a member of their  inner circle. That mattered not to the 
voters; nor does it  today. 
Above all, after eight years out of  power and two bitter defeats, Democrats 
in 1960, like today, wanted a  winner--and Kennedy, despite his supposed 
handicaps, was a winner. On civil  rights, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the race to 
the moon, and other issues,  President Kennedy succeeded by demonstrating the 
same courage, imagination,  compassion, judgment, and ability to lead and unite 
a troubled country that he  had shown during his presidential campaign. I 
believe Obama will do the same.   
_Ted Sorensen_ (http://www.tnr.com/showBio.mhtml?pid=1109&sa=1)  worked with 
John F. Kennedy for eleven years,  first as his senatorial assistant and then 
in the White House as his special  counsel and adviser. He is presently 
working on his memoirs, to be published in  2008. 


Cynthia N.  Vance, M. A.
Strategics International Inc., Miami, Florida
305-378-1327;  fax 305-378-9178
Venice, Florida Office: 941-483-9165
_http://members.aol.com/facilitationfla_ 
(http://members.aol.com/facilitationfla) 

Want  to build your own facilitation skills? 
Want to meet facilitators from around  the world and in your own backyard? 
Mark your calendar for the International  Assoc. of Facilitators Conference 
2008
Atlanta, Georgia -- April 10-12, 2008  See _www.iaf-world.org_ 
(http://www.iaf-world.org/) 




************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at 
http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20070719/e350b410/attachment.html