Monday, July 23, 2007
Is BO the next JFK?
Former member of the best-and-the-brightest Theodore Sorensen argues that Barack Obama is "the next JFK". I suspect that metaphor registers differently for me than many of The New Republic's readers, but I would be very surprised if Obama were not delighted that one of Kennedy's own men has drawn the comparison. That said, Sorensen's essay betrays him as a Camelot romantic and Cambridge elitist of the first order. First, his memory of life in Kennedy's court:
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. (emphasis added)
No doubt the Kennedy years were "golden" for Sorensen. He went to work for Kennedy at the age of 25 and stuck with him through the end, the upshot of which was that Sorensen's career in government effectively peaked well before he was 40. When next the Democrats controlled the White House, Jimmy Carter nominated Sorensen to serve as the Director of Central Intelligence. Opposition in the Democrat-controlled Senate was so great that Sorensen was forced to withdraw his name from consideration. Why? Because he pulled a Sandy Berger!
On top of all that, some affidavits that he submitted in the Pentagon papers trial of Daniel Ellsberg surfaced. As a defense witness, Sorensen testified that he, like Ellsberg, had removed classified information without authorization. When Sorensen left the White House in 1964, he took along 67 boxes of documents, seven of them classified. Included were memos on the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit meeting in Vienna, the war in Laos, the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis. Sorensen used some of the material for his book Kennedy, then donated all of it to the Kennedy Library. He claimed a $231,000 tax deduction, part of which was rejected by the IRS.
Ah, yes, the golden years.
It gets better. Sorensen lists "an extraordinary number of parallels" between BO and JFK. Of more than a dozen such parallels, Sorensen leads with "[b]oth men were Harvard-educated." This is his first amazing parallel? It says more about Sorensen, who would probably prefer to be governed by the Harvard faculty than the first 200 names in the Boston phone book, than it does about Obama and Kennedy. Next thing you know we will be drawing astounding parallels between Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, and Clarence Thomas, all of whom went to the Yale Law School.
Then there is this:
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.
This seems as strained as it is self-promoting. Lots of politicians make speeches that raise their stature. That one of Kennedy's speechwriters should think that a particular speech launched Kennedy's career is not surprising.
I was not able to determine and Sorensen does not say whether he wrote Kennedy's speech in 1956, but neither does he admit that he substantially ghost-wrote Profiles in Courage. He does, however, regard it as the basis of yet another extraordinary parallel:
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.
Since Sorensen -- at the impressively young age of 27 -- wrote most of Profiles in Courage (making him the first and probably only person to ghost-write a Pulitzer prize winning book), this seems like a pretty strained BO-JFK "parallel." Unless, of course, Sorensen is implying that Obama also had a ghost writer. I doubt that, though. Sorensen's argument notwithstanding, one Harvard grad is not necessarily as brilliant as another. It was a lot harder to get into Harvard in 1980 than in 1936. Barack Obama is probably, therefore, much smarter than John F. Kennedy.
10 Comments:
By 
, at
Mon Jul 23, 10:00:00 PM:
I think Sorenson is largely correct, in at least that both JFK and Obama appeal to elitist, anti-populist, limousine liberals.
Those filled with the fear of the ordinary person living their own life, without control by their "betters" and worst of all, upward social mobility.
By , at
Mon Jul 23, 10:06:00 PM:
[Forgive the cheap shot, but]
"That said, Sorensen's essay betrays him as a Camelot romantic and Cambridge elitist..."
Ya think?
By 
Purple Avenger, at
Mon Jul 23, 11:19:00 PM:
JFK would be considered a vicious war mongering neo-con rethuglican today (go read his inaugural address).
Not so much with Obama.
The only concrete parallel I can see is they were both smooth talkers.
By Escort81, at
Tue Jul 24, 12:13:00 AM:
JFK was a Cold Warrior, and ran to the right of Nixon on the so-called "missile gap" in 1960 (when the U.S. still had overwhelming superiority vis-a-vis the USSR).
Obama won't run to the right of anybody on defense.
JFK engaged in relations with women not his wife a great deal, and a cooperative press looked the other way.
Obama is not that stupid, given the current press environment, and I am sure he loves his wife anyway, who in turn has a brother who is a great athlete and would beat the crap out of Obama if he strayed.
By , at
Tue Jul 24, 05:45:00 AM:
Escort81:
You thimk Obama is not that stupid. Remember, even the feminists say great men have great needs.
By , at
Tue Jul 24, 10:28:00 AM:
Lots to be annoyed about here, but why isn't there more outrage about his attempt to claim a tax deduction for things he had apparently misappropriated? From the $3 per pair deduction Clinton took for his used underwear to this, why is it that all the big government liberals are always fond of having us all pay more and more in taxes but none of them ever want to actually pay the taxes themselves?
By Dawnfire82, at
Tue Jul 24, 03:51:00 PM:
By , at
Tue Jul 24, 05:30:00 PM:
George W. went to Harvard business school. Perhaps he should be included in the comparison?
He even speaks Spanish...unlike another Kennedy who was tossed out of Harvard for cheating on his Spanish exam.
By amr, at
Tue Jul 24, 10:59:00 PM:
As one who was 18 years old when Kennedy was killed, I remember a different basis for comparison. JFK was inexperienced in world affairs and apparently did not realized what his actions meant in the international order of things. Leaving the Cuban exiles under attack on the beach and the Berlin Wall under construction gave the Soviets reason to believe they could bully his administration; result the Cuban missile crisis. BO’s debate statement that he would meet with the leaders of nations that oppose us and some who support terrorist activities against our military and citizens starts him on the path JFK blazed. Both do have the ability to draw a crowd and are personable, but that isn’t a qualification for president. It is interesting that Kennedy receives credit from far too many people for what President Johnson did with help from the Republicans in overcoming the southern Democrats resistance to change.
By , at
Wed Jul 25, 10:46:00 AM:
BARACK OBAMA is aa liberal demacrat who wnats sex education for kintergarteners and wants a bigger goverment and open borders just like all liberal left-wing politicians want
