JFK - not really

I've be reading some trash lately in terms of books - a breezy Elizabeth II biography, The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersch, Rewriting HIstory by Dick Morris, and so on.

The Dark Side of Camelot was an excellent example of Tina Brown/Vanity Fair sort of journalism - well written, well edited, and focused on the salacious or rapacious details of the rich and famous. This tome focused on JFK and RFK and their bad behavior. It was interesting in a revisionist sort of way. I mean does anyone actually believe that Camelot is real? Of course not - it is a nice concept used to whitewash some seedy details from a very optomistic period of time.

The one tidbit that was actually eyebrow raising was the sums of money fronted to JFK to get him into the W.H. And it came primarily from dear ol' Joe Kennedy. Thus the first real example of mass marketing of a candidate by a shadowy PAC was the 1960 election.

I'd posit that Obama really transcends the comparisons with JFK primarily based upon his up-by-the-bootstraps biography. Obama had no priveledge in his upbringing, he lacked the strong male role model in the house (if you want to think of Joe K in that way) that JFK had, Obama's wife Michelle is not aristocratic in her background, the family that Obama has now is upper middle class (but they DO have to work), and the main fear that Americans now have to face is their fading status as an economic superpower (JFK was rather more concerned with our military superpower status).

I think that to compare Obama with JFK is to diminish the former on multiple levels. In fact, I'd say that Obama represents more of a post-modern version of JFK - in essence that old paradigm is useful as a historical guide but JFK is actually quite stale in terms of how we look at electoral politics (particularly with the internet).

As one very good case in point: Look at the deftness with which Obama handled Jeremiah Wright and the issues of race and religion in his more perfect union speech" versus JFK's <I'm a Catholic speech.

My point, meandering as it might be, is that Obama has approached his candidacy with considerable more deliberateness and a full attempt to share his vision for how this country can confront its most pressing challenges while also elevating our discussions about those areas of difference. To be sure - I've never been a big Kennedy family fan (they are very vulgar in the truest sense of the word) - but it is not a bias against the family rather a reflection of their values that gave JFK a much more superficial (assuredly far less cerebral) approach to how the president unites the nation.

Perhaps a much more interesting comparison of the paradigm shift that Obama embodies might be with Alexander Hamilton or even Andrew Jackson. Hamilton gave very clear direction to the Federalist party about the centrality and importance of the Federal authority over the states as well as establishing the foundations of the Treasury for the new nation. Jackson of course was a man of the people and his focus on widening the participation of the country in politics and this had the interesting direct effect of causing the collapse of Hamilton's creation. I throw out those names for more suitable comparisons to Obama than JFK simply because both of their roles in the Federal Government had substantial and lasting effects. JFK's legacy? The Peace Corps? The Berlin Wall? Bay of Pigs? Cuban Missle Crisis? Jackie? Containment? None of these seems to line up neatly or cleanly with a vision that Obama has shared with the country - I think that the similarity is only that 2008, much like 1960, offered the chance for a paradigm shift. Beyond that fact and a shared gift for oratory - not much else lines up with JFK.

Of course it is easy to make distictions now - nothing has happened yet beyond naming Rahm Emmanuel chief of staff. So it will be interesting to see how Obama defines this opportunity of a generation for transformative change. Bill Clinton screwed it up horribly and lead to the 1994 rout in the mid-term elections, Ronald Reagan needed two years of partisan battles to get his tax cuts through the Congress before his destiny was clear, no one even remembers W's transition.

It will be interesting to see where it all goes during the next few years.