Obama as JFK? No (and yes)
Is Barack Obama the new JFK? A Washington press corps that is forever on the lookout for its next cue wants to know. (There are links below, but I don’t suggest you actually read them; they’re strictly for illustration purposes.) This doesn’t really sound like a question that wants to be taken seriously, and it isn’t. It’s an honorific–the sort of hero worship that Hugh Sidey came to be venerated for writing about every president in Time–and a cheerleader’s cry.
But it’s not entirely fatuous. JFK was the first born-for-TV president and thus the first political celebrity of the modern age. His charisma, his storybook life and family, and his gift for sounding high-minded without ultimately saying much or committing himself to anything are all mirrored in the rise of Obama. And I suspect that Obama, like Kennedy, has no very vivid sense of the hopes he conjures in his listeners or what he’s going to do about them if elected.
To the civil rights movement, Kennedy gave a little encouragement and a lot of stonewalling; to the emerging generation that would define itself around the anti-war movement, he gave escalation in Vietnam. What would Obama do with the hopes of those supporters who oppose the war, those who want affordable, accessible health care once and for all, those who want to start seeing more economic fairness in the tax code and in laws governing corporations?
Kennedy disappointed sorely, a fact that was forgiven and forgotten after he became America’s first prime-time celebrity martyr, and Obama would surely disappoint as well. But there are disappointments and there are disappointments, and I am relieved to say I don’t believe Barack Obama is any Jack Kennedy.
Take JFK’s foreign policy. No one seems to remember what an avid hawk and Cold Warrior Kennedy was. He adored toughness in all things and believed wholeheartedly in brinksmanship and political subversion in the name of combatting global communism. Vietnam was only the most consequential piece of it. JFK blustered his way from one crisis to another, starting with the Bay of Pigs and proceeding through the Cuban Missile Crisis (where he bet the farm over Soviet missiles in Cuba that would have been no closer to our borders than our missiles in Turkey already were to Soviet borders) and a few misbegotten passes at assassinating Fidel Castro with the help of the CIA. Among his less-remembered achievements was to begin arming the Central American militias that became the next decade’s death squads–again, in the name of battling communist insurgency in the region.
It’s hard to think Barack Obama can be as bad as all that.
Below the jump: Links to select Obama/JFK fugues.
- Former JFK speechwriter Ted Sorenson: Barack Obama: the new JFK
- Boston Globe: Not quite the next JFK
- Washington Monthly: Ask not! Why Obama is no JFK
- Telegraph (UK): Sorenson formally endorses Obama
- Times of London: The Barack Obama enigma: a JFK, a liberal Reagan or a Carter?
- Matt Bai/NYT The Caucus blog: He’s not Jack Kennedy, he’s Bobby
16 Responses to “Obama as JFK? No (and yes)”
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o bum a is a very sexist man like…JFK!
Don’t be too sure about that. The Kennedy/Bubba/Obama lineage looks mighty strong. Give Obama a chance, he might suprise you.
Kudos.
It’s rare when someone remembers JFK with some accuracy.
He was a delightfully witty fellow, but also a chrome-plated war hawk organization man.
This is all lost in the mists, since he was murdered and became the martyred saint.
You’re all a bunch of dunces. (Especially the “writer”.)
Jack Kennedy was the only man who has ever stood up to the Federal Reserve Bank. Who ever stood up to Big Oil and Big Steel. Who tried to change the slimy & corrupt Congresional placement and seniority systems. And who — above all — stood up to the National Security State. Who said no to airstrikes to try and save the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Who said no to troops being sent to Laos, instead arranging a coalition government which stands to this day. Who said no to invasion and nuclear strikes to solve the Missile Crisis. And who most importantly was the only man in Washington DC who prevented sending ground troops to Vietnam. (For proof of all this, one might begin with Gareth Porter’s “Perils of Dominance,” David Kaiser’s “American Tragedy,” and Howard Jones’s “Death of a Generation”, if any of you can read.)
He was also a man who embodied grace, complexity, self-deprecation, hatred of the rich and big business, a refusal to demonize others and puff up ourselves, the assumption that people are basically good, and the idea that society and government must be judged by the way the weakest and most vulnerable among us are taken care of.
To reduce him to nothing but a whoremonger, exposes nothing but the squalor of the reducer’s mind.
Compared to John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama is nothing but a corporate hologram.
Shame on Counterpunch for linking to this nitwit essay.
There isn’t time to go into this here, but I think you are fundamentally missing some huge pieces in criticizing JFK. In merely saying he was a “cold war hawk”, you miss out on knowing that everyone was, and that Kennedy was surrounded by people in Washington who were pure psychopaths. He had people in his ear from the CIA and Pentagon telling him to nuke the world, and he had to deal with an entirely more difficult scenario where there was no help , no allies, no real real voices for peace, and everyone screaming about commie boogie men everywhere. That hysteria wasn’t his creation. The true halls of power in Washington were packed with aging WWII guys who wanted to kill everyone, in a nutshell. Imagine being the president in that atmosphere.
Before the first Kennedy-Nixon debate JFK had been briefed that Ike had given the go-ahead for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
Nevertheless, he attacked Nixon for a do-nothing policy toward Castro, knowing that Nixon could not mention the invasion plans.
When JFK became president, he went along with that plan, around the same time he mentioned to an aide that he now understood the place of the president in the US power structure.
Well, it was much lower than he had anticipated.
So all that business about standing up to this and that–Big Oil, Big Steel–etcetera, is, to turn a phrase, a pile of horseshit.
Obama is already his state’s senator from AIPAC, a dyed-in-the-wool exponent of DLC policies, and has mouthed off about bombing Iran, while continually voting funding for the war in Iraq, expecting to keep a U.S. “presence” there, ad infinitum…. and doing less than nothing to prevent the subversion of democracy at home. e.g. having supported the extension of the “Patriot” act and supporting further incursions into civilian privacy and rights. He is in bed with war profiteers. His stand on torture is nonexistent, in that he certainly had done nothing to prevent it.
He is merely a slightly darker shade of Slick Willy, who if he gets into office, will in the name of bipartisanship, and corporate greed, and maintaining U.S. power worldwide, allow the continuation of all of the dangerous and despicable policies that the administration and the disgusting congress are engaged in at present.
What the hell kind of policies, foreign or domestic, are “hope” or “change”.
These are platitudes, drivel, not policies. We see also his immediate cave-in to the drug and insurance companies with regard to direly needed health care. He sounds exactly like Hillary. And she engineered the present crisis in lack of affordable health care and the perpetuation of a criminal system for relieving the poor and middle classes of their earnings, by these entities… he is no different.
He is slick and dangerous, currently mouthing vapidities until he gets to the white house and thinks he pulls the strings. The distinction between the advisors he has now and the advisors of the Clinton dynasty is nil, which suggests the distinction in policies is also… nil.
Recall that Clinton gave us, via the gorgon Madeleine Albright, 1.5 million dead Iraqis, a financial crisis of staggering proportions (Enron, Worldcom, massive deregulation leading to our present situation…) , Salvage Rider, nonexistent Kyoto agreements, elimination of the social safety net, and the grand-daddy of the Patriot act and its odious siblings and descendants, in the Anti-terrorism/ Anti-crime legislation he championed and rammed through.
Expect no less from Obama.
My take on Obama is that he’s very cautious. He doesn’t take strong positions on things where he may be wrong. But he does take strong positions things that he is sure about.
And I’d have to say that I also can’t claim to have a definitive answer for many of the top issues today. It’s easy to say that your answer is the right one, but would you bet your money on it if you were making the calls?
So where possible, Obama seems to take small steps. Steps that can be retracted if they aren’t working, so he can find the best solutions without being forced to live with bold but faulty leaps.
His health care is like that. It’s not universal single payer. But he has expressed that he would take it further if it doesn’t work like he plans. When you look at it soberly, is it possible that there’s something better than single payer, given our current setup? I can’t say for sure. And he’s not “against” single payer either. I think he’s just cautious.
But for things he can be sure about, he goes full force. He’s very progressive, and his voting record shows it 100%.
He wants to raise the cap on the SS tax income limits (so higher income people are not exempt from SS tax), while lowering the SS tax rate on mid to lower incomes. Because of the payroll tax, effective taxes in the US are nearly flat across all incomes, despite the graduated income tax. And seeing as how SS payroll taxes is the biggest tax expense for low income people, this would be hugely progressive. That’s quite bold, but again, I think it’s something he is sure about.
Another positive is that he really is intent on behaving like an adult rather than a politican/child. He’s intent on attacking dumb Republican ideas rather than attacking the Republican. And he’s intent on informing the public on the pros and cons on of issue, I think because he feels the honest truth will win. I expect he’ll have more credibility and trust of Americans than any other politician.
Seriously, I still find it hard to believe that the right wing is able to fool so many people so much of the time and convince reasonable people that the center is in the middle of dems and reps. But they’re a bunch of loonies on most issues. So my hope is that Obama can shine the light on wacko republican misinformation through appealing to people’s civility. (haha I said I have “Hope”)
Recent disclosures from official files are in sharp contrast to what’s written here. A strikingly unexpected, and more favorable, view of Kennedy is emerging.
Rooted in documents declassified in the wake of the public’s reaction to Oliver Stone’s film “JFK,” academics and researchers have discovered that the real JFK, despite his considerable flaws, was worlds away from the hawkish buffoon concocted by Holland (and Cockburn). What is perhaps most surprising is how broad, divers, even ‘mainstream,’ the new consensus is.
Among others, the architects of this new image are Naval War College historian David Kaiser, Harvard historians Ernest May and Philip Zelikow, University of Alabama historian Howard Jones, and Boston University historian Robert Dallek. It turns out that once-secret evidence shows that JFK was clearly not “always hawkish.” And that Kennedy did represent a threat, perhaps even a ‘radical threat’ to powerful institutions.
For example, the records demonstrate a pattern in Kennedy we are unaccustomed to seeing in presidents: rather than JFK following advice on critical issues–the way presidents usually do, the way LBJ did–Kennedy often ignored it. He withstood pressure from the CIA and the military to follow-up the foundering Bay of Pigs invasion with a military assault on Cuba. He rejected advice to use force in Laos, pushing against the defense establishment to achieve an ultimately successful negotiated settlement. He shouldered aside the defense and intelligence establishments to advance a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviets. And as May and Zelikov note, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, taped conversations show that it was JFK who was often “the only one in the room [full of advisors] determined not to go to war.”
And, finally, on the contentious issue of what JFK would have done in Vietnam, a rising current now runs strongly against Holland (and Cockburn). For example, in Harper’s Magazine, Naval War College historian David Kaiser wrote that in his new book, American Tragedy, he had extensively documented that there were “ numerous occasions during 1961, 1962, and 1963 on which Kennedy did exactly that [‘stopped the United States from going to war in Southeast Asia’], rejecting the near unanimous proposals of his advisers to put large numbers of American combat troops in Laos, South Vietnam, or both.”
Among informed observers, Kaiser’s view of JFK’s contrary nature has emerged as a dominant theme. University of Alabama historian Howard Jones said that when he began his study he “was dubious” about the assertions of “Kennedy apologists [that] he would not have sent combat troops to Vietnam and America’s longest war would never have occurred.” A look at declassified files changed his thinking. “What strikes anyone reading the veritable mountain of documents relating to Vietnam,” Jones admitted, to his own surprise, “is that the only high official in the Kennedy administration who consistently opposed the commitment of U.S. combat forces was the president.” “The materials undergirding [his, Jones’] study demonstrate that President Kennedy intended to reverse the nation’s special military commitment to the South Vietnamese made in early 1961.”
Historian Robert Dallek came to much the same conclusion. “Toward the end of his life John F. Kennedy increasingly distrusted his military advisers and was changing his views on foreign policy. A fresh look at the final months of his presidency suggests that a second Kennedy term might have produced not only an American withdrawal from Vietnam, but also rapprochement with Fidel Castro’s Cuba.” Regarding his supposed hawkishness, Dallek produced a Kennedy quote that gets to the heart of the matter: “The first advice I’m going to give my successor is to watch the generals and to avoid feeling that just because they were military men their opinions on military matters were worth a damn.” This is scarcely the Kennedy we get from Max Holland. It is more like the one we get from Oliver Stone.
So it may well be that the greatest irony of all is that in the mountain of documents released in response to the public uproar over the pro-Kennedy and pro-conspiracy film that Max Holland so abhors, the Bronze Star-winning, Vietnam veteran movie maker, Oliver Stone, has won again.
To The Establishment, JFK was a threat. He did represent change–right up until the moment the shots rang out in Dealey Plaza.
G Aguilar
PS Footnotes for these comments, which is taken from the final section of a long essay I wrote, are available on-line at: http://www.ctka.net/pr900-holland.html
Thanks Gary Aguilar and Mitchum for shining a light on the truth. The media campaign to make JFK a war hawk, along the lines of the modern neo-cons, is totally deceptive and totally simplistic garbage peddled by people who have no clue about real history. Have you ever heard the speech where he railed against the steel industry? Telling them they were ripping off the WWII vets who fought for this country and made these corporate whores all rich? He has many speeches that are shockingly relevant and eye opening when you read them. Can you imagine a president talking like that today? There is no doubt that he was hated by every true power broker in the nation, mainly the CIA, Hoover, Pentagon & Defense Department, the top generals and military advisers, Mafia, the arms manufacturers, oil companies, and big business. This is a fact. If he was a “lock step” cold warrior nut, he would have had the power base loving him instead of hating him.
Kennedy was even worse…
He put the BAATHISTS in power in Baghdad
via a coup among a series of other coups including in Colombia and planned
the overthrow of Brazilian democracy completed after his death… fascistjunta put in. He even carried out
a bloodless regime change in Canada, over 400 agents went into Canada to do dirty tricks on PM Diefenbaker’s campaign in order to put his bitch Lester B Pearson in power.
The list goes on and one.
LOL. You actually think when foreign governments are overthrown, with dirty tricks teams and assassins running around all over, that it is the president that orders that? That’s the CIA, with zero input from JFK. The CIA was a rogue organization, and remains so to a large degree today. If you think he had any say in having black ops teams running around the world, you are crazy. Those people (CIA) hated him. You must be getting your history from Sean Hannity and Glen Beck.
Noam Chomsky wrote a book, Re-Thinking Camelot, which shows pretty clearly that JFK and his administration were nowhere near as wonderful as popular culture would have us believe. Most of the chapters have been posted on the web, and are worth reading. As for Obama, I agree that his record so far indicates that he’d disappoint us again and again and…
I think this discussion of comparisons with St. John is quite interesting because it reveals more about the assumptions of what the US prerogatives in the world are and raises the question how much “l’etat, c’est moi” applies.
At least in the public eye, the US President is the only official that all US citizens eligible (and allowed) to vote can help choose. Both in the US and abroad the truism circulates that this is the most powerful office in the world. What is rarely analysed is whether the relative strength of the office and the officeholder.
If we believe that Kennedy was in some ways a political non-conformist in a shark pool– at least plausible given the outsider status of his proto-fascist father–that does not mean that he benefited from election to the presidency. One of the remarks above indicates that he soon realised that although the office may be the most powerful, it is not in the gift of the people for the president to exercise this power– but in the gift of the elite who rule.
Oliver Stone inadvertantly makes two points in his “presidential films”: both dealing with people who were forced out of office before their terms expired.
Both Nixon and Kennedy would appear– regardless of how one judges their personal politics– to have believed that they were president and that the office was theirs not just the title.
A case could be made that Kennedy simply was not willing to conform or leave on his own or that Nixon left on the promise he would be rehabilitated and was essentially too small to even try to stand up against the oligarchy that eventually removed him.
The contrast which demonstrates this is that the present officeholder does not even pretend to have a policy of his own or exercise power in a sovereign manner. Watergate was nothing in comparison to what the present officeholder has committed and admitted. The big difference is that GWB is a full-fledged member (even if a pretty incompetent one) of the elite that runs the US (and probably dispatched Kennedy and forced Nixon to resign).
There is no great conspiracy here– that is the way all oligarchies work (esp. in a private sector driven model like the US).
Now what does that mean for Obama? Well, I think that is pretty clear, if he wants to be officeholder he will have to remember who owns the office– it is just a short-term lease he is getting.
“The media campaign to make JFK a war hawk…”
Pardon me, but WTF are you talking about? There isn’t now and never has been any such thing as what you mention — quite the reverse.
GAguilar’s wordy reply fits well with the standard view of JFK-the-good commonly bandied in all major media. Sadly, it doesn’t amount to much against the actual bombing and escalation that took place in Vietnam under Kennedy as commander-in-chief.
“A fresh look at the final months of his presidency suggests that a second Kennedy term might have produced not only an American withdrawal from Vietnam…” or, it might not have. Talk about wishful thinking. This leans heavily on texts not published here, but GAguilar ought to at least do us the service of admitting that JFK explicitly conditioned this possible withdrawal on the judgment of his Pentagon advisors that progress was being made and that the military conditions were right — i.e. it was a pretty damn nebulous “might have” indeed.
Putting these “might haves” up against the record of what really did happen during Kennedy’s tenure ought to be sobering for those who’ve been drinking too much from the Camelot punch bowl.
Foreign Affairs magazine, no Chomsky lovers, produced this: “Chomsky rightly ridicules the notion of a Vietnam pullout.” Rightly! Of course, they also (pretend to) misunderstand Chomsky’s view of American politics, saying he sees Presidents as “puppets manipulated by America’s economic managers” and that Chomsky “sees dark, conspiratorial forces directing most actors on the public stage,” hardly a sensible view of Chomsky for anyone who’s read him. But the point stands — there is no direct evidence of a certain JFK-enforced withdrawal, and much prior evidence of increasing commitments and escalations.
I appreciate the well reasoned, and well expressed, comments about this story. It is refreshing to examine other points of view than what comes through the mainstream media. There is much to agree with here.
I was around through the Kennedy-Johnson campaign and terms of office. JFK had the Democratic platform to campaign for him, shaping the public perception of what he stood for. LBJ may or may not have believed in it but he did honor the platform and did effectively pass the sentiments it expressed into legislation. He should be admired for that as much as he is reviled for sending more troops to Vietnam.
This is one Texan who appreciates LBJ for passing into law what passionate liberals sought domestically. Therein was his greatness.