Obama and Kennedy: Gut vs. Experience
By SusanUnPC on January 3, 2008 at 3:35 PM in Democrats, John F. Kennedy, Obama, Presidential Candidates
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. …”
[Image top right: Kennedy's book, Why England Slept. Widmer writes: "[Kennedy] had acquired travel experiences that most people take a lifetime to accumulate, richly detailed in 
biographies like Robert Dallek’s An Unfinished Life. His father was ambassador to the United Kingdom in the pivotal year 1938, and young Kennedy was in the audience of the House of Commons as the Munich deal was furiously debated (the experience shaped his first book, Why England Slept).]
“Ask Not! Why Obama is No JFK” points out:
[T]he comparison falls short when voters consider the key question for 2008: foreign policy experience. It’s true that Obama, like Kennedy, is a youngish senator (at 46, three years older than Kennedy when he ran for president), but the parallel falters after that. The more one looks into Kennedy’s lifelong preparation for the job, the more one realizes how misleading it was, then and now, to describe him as inexperienced. Everyone who has stressed Kennedy’s youth, from Dan Quayle in 1988 to Obama today, has bumped up against the uncomfortable fact that JFK was an extremely well-informed statesman in 1960.
Ted Widmer provides “rich detail on key points of comparison between JFK and Barack Obama,” says Clemons. Widmer then examines Obama’s claims, and finds them wanting, as have former ambassador Joseph Wilson, Larry Johnson, and others.
“Ask Not! Why Obama is No JFK” continues the comparisons:
[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).
This is an image of John F. Kennedy’s heavily-revised manuscript of Why England Slept from the Museum of World War II site.
I’ll close with Widmer’s recounting of John F. Kennedy’s “long and literal” journey to the presidency:
In 1939 alone, he took in the Soviet Union, Romania, Turkey, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Greece, France, Germany, Italy and Czechoslovakia. As the war was ending, he attended the San Francisco conference that created the United Nations, filing seventeen dispatches for the Chicago Herald American.
He maintained this lively interest in world affairs as a young Congressman. In 1951 he went on two extraordinary journeys, the first a five-week trip to Europe, from England to Yugoslavia, to consider the military situation on the continent. Then, a few months later, a seven-week, 25,000-mile trek that included Israel, Iran, Pakistan, India, Singapore, Thailand, French Indochina, Korea and Japan. It was this trip, in particular, that awakened a sense in him that the old colonial empires were doomed, and that the French effort to keep Vietnam was especially futile. In the aftermath of his trip, he gave speeches that ridiculed the French (and by extension, the American) position, and proved that he was no simplistic Cold Warrior. In 1957, he continued to chart a maverick’s course with a deeply-informed speech on Algeria that criticized France and the U.S. for trying to sustain an unsustainable conflict against an insurgent population. It infuriated both Democrats and Republicans, and France, a NATO ally at the time, was enraged—but obviously he was correct.
Critics and admirers alike have generally neglected the full extent of Kennedy’s early experience. But clearly it shaped him profoundly, and each journey deepened his portfolio. Further, each trip empowered him, and gave him the confidence to swim against the tide, a trait that would prove essential in the presidency. While dedicated to veterans and certain core principles of American defense, he also showed, well before his election, a growing skepticism of the extremes of Pentagon thinking. Perhaps most impressively, he found the courage to reject the knee-jerk isolationism of his most important backer—his father, Joseph P. Kennedy.
To be sure, even with all of that training, Kennedy showed inexperience during his early months in the White House, including the disastrous decision to invade Cuba’s Bay of Pigs, and his ineffective performance at his first summit with Khrushchev in Vienna. But he soon righted himself, and returned to the independent judgment that he had acquired during his long and literal journey toward the presidency.
John F. Kennedy with his “deck pals” during World War II.
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Taylor Marsh has more thoughts on this extraordinary article.
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By Sarah Palin (Release date: November 17. 2009)
I’m always bothered by comparisons to earlier politicians. How many Republicans have tried to claim the mantle of being “the new Ronald Reagan”?
As if that wasn’t annoying enough, Bush has had the nerve to compare himself to both Truman and Churchill!
Now we have the mainstream press, so terrified of Edwards, comparing him to Dean — he’s the “angry” candidate, just like they painted Dean (of whom they were also terrified) as the “angry” candidate. The public would be well-served to quit reading the mainstream press and watching the GE/Viacom/Disney News Channel.
And, for god’s sake! any Democrat who claims (or has his surrogates claim) that he is the “next JFK” should be tied down and forced to watch Lloyd Bentsen’s admonition to Dan Qualye, everyday for the next six months.
Don’t forget, Bush also compared himself to George Washington, with amusing results.
That Obama would try to assume the mantle of JFK tells us more about Obama’s ego than it does about any resemblance between the two.
I hope Edwards said that if anyone isn’t angry they’re crazy.
Making such comparisons are silly and frankly unfair to both parties. Growing up in New York do you know how many “the next Mickey Mantles” there were?
I think the comparisons to JFK have in part been the Democratic Party’s obsession with the Kennedy mystique and the desire to relive that brief era.
Bush also compared himself to George Washington
I saw him say that and I would love to know who wrote that crap for the squatter in chief! They should be given wooden choppers to go with a wooden head that is GWB. (Got Wood?)
I agree with Shoephone. The comparision to some person in the past gives me the creeps.
LOL. I totally forgot GWB compared himself to Washington.
Or maybe I just blocked it out.
Huckabee has not yet comapred himself to WJ Bryan.
So many possibilities..
The lack etiquette involved, reminds me of the “double dog dare you” and going right for the Triple….
I sure hope “someone” gets their tongue stuck to the proverbial pole in the cold of Iowa and beyond.
If Iowa’s voters ” kick the tires and look under the hood” as Senator Obama and others have encouraged. Iowa voters will see Obama sitting on the fence holding his finger in the wind, Hillary’s warmongering votes in 2002 and the Kyl Lieberman amendment and appearing as the PAC WOMAN, and Edwards consistently focused on addressing poverty and breaking up corporate lobbying. HELLO …EDWARDS IS NOT TAKING PAC MONEY!
So Edwards was one of the 23 senators that voted nay? I like John Edwards, and maybe Elizabeth even more. What still troubles me about him is JE taking on retired Gen. Hugh Shelton as an unpaid hitman/ advisor against Wes Clark in ‘04. And despite JE handily defeating Cheney in their debate - until the end when Cheney lied and said he had never met JE because JE was a no show in the senate(Another lie)and JE had no response.(They had breakfasted with the Cheney’s twice, which Elizabeth reminded Cheney of, after the debate) I would have liked to have seen more mettle from him.
As far as Hillary’s vote authorizing the use of force against Iraq, a bad vote and I wished she would have copped to itlike Edwards did.
I believe HRC’s reason for voting for KL (A bellicose yet toothless bit of name calling) was a stall tactic until the NIE was released.
They all have clay feet and none of them are perfect. Yes, I’m an accursed HRC supporter but I’d be fine with Edwards.
Still trying to see the “experience” that Hillary Clinton has.
I attend a lot of NFL games. That doesn’t make me a candidate for a coaching job.
Rudy Guiliani has more experience than all of the dem cong candidates COMBINED.
Giuliani has more experience than all the Dem candidates combined?
LOL. Rudy Giuliani’s the same guy who stuck his headquarters in the WTC after the 1993 bombing and didn’t give fire and police adequate communications equipment. Firemen HATE him! Giuliani’s only counter-terrorism and foreign policy experience is…well…zip, nada, non-existent. Giuliani is a corrupt joke! The only thing Giuliani brings to the table is being in NYC on 9/11, as he never fails to remind everyone. But, you know, a lot of other people were in NYC that day too and that doesn’t equate into presidential material.
But go ahead and vote for him, Graywolf…you’ll be among his dwindling support.
The smell of his decisions were blowing up the Hudson for months after 9/11. He was briefed after the the 1st WTC bombing ’cause they told him it was still a target and he did NOT listen. He was also a prosecutor with connections to the Mob he so agressively went after. So to say he did not know about what the soutern district was doing in the 1990’s is a bogus argument. Sure he did not everything back then, but he knew enough. And guess what Canis Lupis? He was more interested in his cousins’ booty AND stuffing his pockets with garbage contracts than where you were to going to scavenge for your next meal. Happy freakin new year to you.
Rudy Giuliani is beastly ugly. Nearly every Italian and Italian-American I know doesn’t believe that Giuliani has once ounce of Italian blood. Not by his unattractive face and not by his unattractive lifestyle. Surely the man was adopted at birth.
Remember that scene in the film Network. Get up out of your seats and go to the window and stick your head out of the window and yell “I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it any more”
Clip from Network
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90ELleCQvew&feature=related
He certainly can match any three candidates in combined marriages. Hey, his own kids don’t even support his sorry ass.
Whatsamatter, little feller - the Free Repuke won’t let you post on Rudy?
Rudy Guiliani has more experience than all of the dem cong candidates COMBINED
The only thing he has more experience in is getting divorced from his wives and reality.
Its funny.
The total lack of ability on the left to posit an adult argument.
If Rudy’s wives come up, how about Bill Clinton’s numerous affairs BEFORE the WH - while he was gaining valuable experience as governor of Arkansas?
Why did your girl, Shillary, stay in that marriage?
Who knows, who cares?
It’s as (ir)relevant as Rudy’s wives.
Ya real family values eh? What you think? You can’t. Have you ever been experienced? The Sun rises from the bottom of the sea out at Montauk Point\
That is a real good question. Why would a women disgraced stay? Not so many would…what does that say about her?
….Why did your girl, Shillary, stay in that marriage?….
As it pertains to Hillary, I think we can safely call her behavior “gold digging”, particuarly since even though she made it to Yale, she has core Bible Belt values. As we all know, divorces are easy to come by in the Bible Belt, with Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas having the highest rates in the country.
If Hillary had happened to be raised in the Northeast with Catholic values, we could then attribute her devotion to a philanderer as “respect for the sanctity of marriage”. But since sanctity of marriage is not taught in the Bible Belt, Hillary can only be a gold digger.
And to digress a little. If anyone out there thinks the high divorce rate in the USA is a problem for American society, elect an evangelical minister named Huckabee and watch the divorce rate soar even higher.
I have never really understood what would make someone that was publicly, totally humilated stick around…I would have cut the string and moved on. That had to hurt. One aspect of it though says to me..”ok Hillary has one tough hide, even if you think it was “golddigging”.
Iowa is a very white state, so an Obama win there is a real positive. It shows as a country we’re moving beyond some old stereotypes. I don’t know if Obama writes his own speeches, or if he uses writers, I thought his acceptance speech was top notch. On the other side I was disappointed in Ron Paul’s numbers: I know Paul can’t win but am of the opinion he brings some serious issues to the debates, especially the deficit & so far noone seems to be really addressing that. So for tonight: Congratulations to Sen. Obama, it was hard fought & well won. New Hampshire will get rid of Huckabee & we can start to get a look at what’s really going on.
We don’t have to worry about Huckabee. Even if he wins the nomination, people of color in America will be reminded that Huckabee’s Christmas “cross” really looks like a KKK attack on their front lawn.
INCOMING>>>>>
Hey Folks….Happy New Year to all!!!
This is the first time I have checked the pulse of “No Quarter” in several weeks, and I must say that the neoliberal/closet-conservative rhetoric seems to be trying to fashion a few new attempts at disguised progressive discourse. By what definition have Bill or Hillary Clinton ever been anything but bonafide conservatives within the Democrat party establishment? Redefining themselves as DLC style moderates, feeling the pain of the poor and disenfranchised masses, is only good theatre on the political stage of the willingly uninformed; it has little to do with where fact and reason meet reality. Let’s face it boys and girls, conservative thought (which I believe to be the ultimate oxymoron) is antithetical to progressive reasoning. These people are philosophically afraid of unabridged enlightenment and the challenge it presents to the status quo, as viewed through their linear and narrow view of life.
As thinking Progressives how can we not support John Edwards’ desire to end our nations march towards hegemonic fascism through the corruption of our government, and most of its institutions, by corporate interests and their sycophants, or how can we honestly or intellectually allow ourselves to accept politically motivated comparisons between Barack Obama’s intentions and those of the likes of Bill Chrystal and his neoconservative cabal of political charlatans? Does it really matter why such stupid lies and dissembling are employed as “normal political speech?” Is there really any doubt, any doubt at all, who the narrow few are that benefit by such slander and deceit? Is John Edwards wrong on the issues surrounding the corruption of our government and our election process? Is Barack Obama somehow infringing on Bill Clinton’s exclusive right to identify with the dreams and ideals of JFK on the political stage? What a silly and trite idea!
Most of you decry the pitiful and downright shameful condition of our nations press and the corruption of the regulation of our public’s access to reliable professional journalism and information. Well my friends, simply harken back to Billy Bob Clinton’s collusion with the Republican Congress, and the resulting deregulation efforts that have resulted in our present MSM consolidation.
Can anyone appreciate the unmitigated hypocrisy of a leader who advocates for the unfettered education of all children on one hand, while completely abrogating the open access to all information on the other? How can anyone claim an informed public as an ideal, while surreptitiously working to undermine public access to information through political trickery and official censorship?
Remember, this election is about getting rid of the enemies from within our own government, not the foreign variety; once we have our own house in order, the rest will come in due course.
Here is my own take on the Iowa caucus.
230,000 voted - ~153,000 for Democrats & ~76,000 for Republicans
Obama - 58,140
Edwards - 45,900
Clinton - 44,370
Huckabee - 26,600
It would appear that the leading Democrat doubled the votes of the leading Republican, but the conservatives (Clinton and Huckabee ET AL) beat the Progressives 120,370 to 108,630. Obama beat Clinton by 13,770 votes; which is a greater margin than the combined Conservatives beat the Progressives.
We still have work to do, but things are definitely looking better!
153,000 for Democrats & ~76,000 for Republicans
Republicans always cross caucus. The GOP has closed door meetings and counts votes later, caucus is all just bluster for them.
Low GOP turnout indicates a lot of ratfucking is going on.
Kerry won Iowa and had higher Dem vs. Rep. turnout and he lost the general by over ten thousand votes.
Other totals indicate 115g gop and 236g dems.
On past projection numbers it would indicate more people will vote than there are state citizens.
It would mean you would have to throw out the playbook and campaign in different style.
Low information first time voters, etc.
I am concerned about the general turn out. Turn out for Democrats while have to be overwhelming to overcome the events of the last four election cycles. What is wierd is the DNC is not talking very much about election fraud and raising awareness.
I can fly but I can’t type.Democrats will have
[...] Obama and Kennedy: Gut vs. Experience by SusanUnPC <a href=” Kennedy Choosing Johnson v Obama Choosing Biden by Bud White [...]
Iowa is a very white state, so an Obama win there is a real positive.
Obama did not win Iowa. He sent in bus loads of blacks, probably ACORN volunteers, to take over the caucuses. He cheated to get more votes. That is not the same as winning.
He did the same thing here in Texas; thus, he “won” the caucuses, but Hillary won the primary.
Not to mention that here in Harris County (around Houston), Acorn had registered 4,000 dead people to vote, and surprisingly, those votes were actually CAST in the caucuses.
Hellooooooooo