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Obama and Kennedy: Gut vs. Experience – Part II

By SusanUnPC on January 6, 2008 at 11:52 PM in John F. Kennedy, Obama

– Via Big Tent Democrat’s post at TalkLeft.com

From “Part I: Obama and Kennedy: Gut vs. Experience“:

The Obama campaign has often summoned the spirit of John F. Kennedy. That evocative association is finally and forever severed in “Ask Not! Why Obama is No JFK,” a new Washington Monthly article by Ted Widmer — who Steve Clemons calls “one of the most insightful historians of early American political history and Director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. …”

More from Part I:

[E]xcept for a brief stopover in London, returning from Russia in 2005, [Barack Obama] has apparently never been to Western Europe since launching his political career. What renders this gap especially surprising is that Obama is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe. Not only has the Senator not visited the region his committee oversees, but as Steve Clemons of the Washington Note has observed, Obama’s committee has not held a single policy-oriented hearing since he’s been chairman. Europe may not be the central playing field it was in Kennedy’s day, but it remains essential to the global set of alliances and relationships that the U.S. needs to cultivate in the new century. In fact, there is no place where it will be more urgent to rebuild bridges. As Obama knows, the United States cannot do it alone—and Europe will need to play a supporting role in whatever strategy the next president articulates.

It is encouraging that Obama has several times displayed what his campaign calls independence, expressing his disapproval of the Iraq war in particular. But disapproving Iraq is not exactly independence—it is more or less the standard line on the left, and quite different from developing a nuanced third position, which was Kennedy’s strength in the 1950s, as he steered between the hand-wringing of Stevenson liberals and the mindless conservatism of many Democrats and Republicans on the right.

Widmer’s remarks about Obama’s very ill-advised comments about Pakistan are especially worrying:

It’s true that Obama threatened to bomb Pakistan, a position that most people on the left would find scary—but that is not the kind of measured solution, tough but practical, that most of us associate with JFK. In fact, it is a rather extraordinary lurch to the right, like an involuntary tic, that most on the right would actually disavow. It is difficult to see how a bombing run over Pakistan would do anything to help anyone except the very people it was designed to punish.

A “lurch to the right.” Again, we find Obama embracing rightwing talking points (as he has on Social Security and health care). …

:::::::::::::::::::::::::

(Read all of Part I.)

  • Shirin

    OK, why not just change this site to Obamasucks.com and get it over with.

    Really, and truly, this is getting very boring!

    • http://noquarterusa.net/ SusanUnPC

      You didn’t enjoy the video of Kennedy? I loved it. You can take from it whatever you want — but I loved his tough rhetoric, his political savvy, his substantive oratory. And he had so much more experience than his critics said.

      • Shirin

        Kennedy is one thing, but this all Obamasucks all the time is becoming very tedious.

  • wethornet

    here’s an art. in today’s wapo about obama and the reception that the rethugs will give him. it should be a reality check for everyone.

    short version: repub. lions will not lay down with dem. lambs and make nice.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/06/AR2008010602402.html?hpid=topnews

  • kenoshaMarge

    I find Democrats that try to compare their candidate to JFK just as pathetic as Republicans that are forever looking for another St. Ronnie the Reagan.

    Obama is nothing like JFK. JFK was a fighter. Obama is a conciliator. Both could give one hell of a speech. Speechifying is hardly enough. Kennedy had more, much more. Obama?

  • wethornet

    shirin, this one’s for you. yesterday, your girl ;-) hillary said….


    In Nashua, Hillary skates on the edge of Iraq revisionism:

    “After 9/11, I would never have taken us to war in Iraq,” she said. “I would have stayed focused on Afghanistan because the real threat was coming from there.”

    (http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0108/Back_to_Iraq.html)

  • S. Markom

    And what really is Hillary’s experience without the smoke and mirrors?

    The fact is that two of the only really qualified candidates are already out (Biden and Dodd), only one left (Richardson), and one never entered (Bob Kerrey).

    The Democrats have never had the choice of three such inexperienced people as the leading nominees for President. Could there be an opening for a Draft Gore?

  • mudkitty

    There’s no smoke and mirrors in Hillary’s experience…that is a rightwing myth that your buying into. I’ll venture to say, that her experience beats yours anyday.

    But the title of the post itself, guts vs experience, is a false choice, and a false dichotomy. It’s not an either/or.

  • mkolb

    S. Markom, go check votesmart.org and read the biographies on the candidates and their various voting records etc.

    As for a draft for Gore? He’d be a fool to jump back into politics after the way he was treated in 2000 and he is definitely no fool. He can get more accomplished from right where he is.

  • Mr.Murder

    Kennedy was a bit shrill sounding. Sounds like a partisan, bitter Democrat.

    He’s just too angry for office.

    Oh, I guess he didn’t get the memo. He was supposed to be moderate and bipartisan.

    • http://noquarterusa.net/ SusanUnPC

      Heh.

      You get it. You always do.

    • kenoshaMarge

      Absol-damn-lutely! You nailed it 100%.

  • Retired

    When I first looked at the title of the post I thought that you were referring to Ted Kennedy, who has both substantial experience as well as a fairly substantial gut. I was wondering when you were going to get to Obama. Then I watched the video and started cracking up at my first reaction.

    Frankly, I am strapping myself down for tomorrow. There is going to be so much spin once the New Hampshire results are in that Earth may toss a few of us off into outer space. Sen. Clinton’s campaign staff has been spinning furiously all day about how finishing second is really a win. One hopes that the Senator will be able to calm them down so that they all don’t go off and pout in a corner if they don’t get the kind of results that they want. The key to experience is to pick yourself up after a setback and move out smartly. We’ve certainly seen the Clintons do this numerous times, but some of their more up front staffers, at least the ones that are showing up in the media, seem a bit callow. I guess only time will tell on this one.

  • Sara

    Listening to a piece on C-Span earlier today I discovered that two of the surviving then youngish New Frontiersmen, now among the last survivors of Kennedy’s Administration, have been working quietly with Obama for some weeks, doing what is essentially critical but drudgework in the campaign.

    Ted Sorenson who was JFK’s wordsmith while in the Senate, and speechwriter plus Counsel, along with former Senator Harris Wofford, who served Kennedy in the Campaign as his Civil Rights Specialist — and then as Special Assistant for Civil Rights, and later as Schriver’s deputy in organizing the Peace Corps — and later as director of the Peace Corps in Africa. The two of them hooked up and are moving around the country training Obama’s volunteers — on an unpaid basis.

    As I understand what they are up to, it involves connecting this generation of young volunteers back to the historical ideals of those who volunteered for the New Frontier…be it the campaign or for the Peace Corps. Apparently Obama wanted volunteer training to stress this connection — not for its PR value, but to root his movement solidly in that organizational paradigm. I think it impressive that Obama got two of the surviving New Frontiersmen to volunteer to train volunteers.

    • http://noquarterusa.net/ SusanUnPC

      Widmer addresses Sorenson’s involvement in his superbly written article for the Washington Monthly.

  • Sara

    I don’t think Sorenson and Wofford are about writing speeches, from what I understood from the C-Span interview, they are training volunteers.

    I too have some reservations about Obama’s Foreign Policy experience and credentials. Hopefully, at some near date he will give a major Foreign Policy Address — I think the usual site is Georgetown — and provide a framework whereby we can see where he is headed, and most important, see where the experienced Foreign Policy and National Security people in Democratic Circles might fit should it appear he will be nominated.

    The other day I talked with someone who had spent ten days in Iowa working for Obama along with two of our Congresspersons (I am posting from Minnesota, and the Congresspersons were Betty McCollugh and Keith Ellison who along with our Mayor sponsored the team in Iowa), and apparently there was much speculation that Obama might ask Jim Webb to run with him as VP. Whether that comes from BO or his staff, or just was speculation — don’t know. But it is an interesting idea none the less. The idea is as much electorial (Someone who won a border state, Scotch-Irish background, and has the military credentials Obama lacks) as it is about organizing an executive — but if authoratative, it suggests a direction.

    Our Caucuses here in Minnesota are not till February 5, and many of us are just as involved in the second half of the caucus name (Our Senate Candidate — I will be caucusing for Al Franken) as we are in the Presidential Race. We all can “live with” any of the top three, as people put it, so we will just watch New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and all, and firm up a preference later. Personally I wish my first choice, Chris Dodd, had survived in the top tier. but didn’t happen.

    But watching what is happening — Obama is going to clean up delegates here in Minnesota — my guess is he will get at least 2/3rds of the delegates as things stand now. Hillary just doesn’t have strong positive support, that is, she hasn’t given the long term party activists — the people who organize the caucuses and then the campaigns, a reason to stick with her. People who know how to win campaigns talk about non-communication with her management team — too much top down management, too little respect for local and state leadership. Apparently offered real skilled help from Wellstone Action and the Dean people who in the last two years won back the State Legislature, won a Senate Seat, Won two constitutional officers — her people decided to stay away from such and not actually tie into the Party Organization in the state. So those folk all signed on with either Obama or Edwards, and that hardly helped Hillary. It is just dumb. From what I hear, the same thing happened in Iowa…most of Governor Culver’s workers split between Obama and Edwards. So while I do worry that Obama needs Foreign Affairs seasoning — I also am deeply concerned that in caucus states, the people who know how to organize for you in that system were turned away.

    In recent weeks there has been much talk about what Arvonne Fraser had to say about Hillary Clinton in her recently published political Autobiography. For those who do not know who Arvonne is — short outline. She started political life as the office manager for Hubert Humphrey’s 1948 campaign. She went from that job to the DFL State Office Manager. She then married Don Fraser, and had six children, but also managed campaigns, including getting her Husband elected to the State Senate, and then Congress in 1962. She managed JFK’s 1960 campaign in Minnesota. Moved to DC, and managed Don’s Capital Hill Office for years. Don eventually became second to Lee Hamilton on Foreign Affairs in the House. Arvonne caught on to the Womens movement very early, helped found NOW, The Womens’ Political Caucus in Minnesota and DC, Women’s Equity Action League and much else — and skipping lots of action, Carter named her as Assistant Secretary of State for International Women’s Affairs. When Reagan was elected, she brought many of the cancelled State Women’s programs back to Minnesota, raised the money for them, and ran them out of the Humphrey Institute. Then, when Clinton was elected, Womens organizations pushed her for Delegate to the UN Commission on the Status of Women. She served two years, but then apparently Hillary arranged to have her fired, because Hillary wanted to run the delegation to the Beijing UN Women’s Conference, and Arvonne and all her networks into the Feminist Organizations with a Foreign Policy tilt — not needed. Believe me, the book, published in November (DFL’ers specialized in giving it as Xmas presents this year) with Garrison Keillor doing several state wide Radio interviews with Arvonne (Whom he calls “Saint Arvonne of the Church of Perpetual Responsibility”), to sell the book, did not actually Help Hillary within the DFL Party. Not in Minnesota, not in Iowa, not in South Dakota, and probably not in Wisconsin. Arvonne’s story probably has its counterparts around the country — and the weakness of Hillary’s ability to forge a winning campaign, probably has lots to do with this pattern.

    It is a hard truth to finally have the thousand small slights come home to haunt — but that is what seems to be happening now. People want something different.