Obama, Kennedy and Echoes of 1968

In announcing his candidacy, he said he was running ” to close the gap that now exists between black and white, between rich and poor, between young and old.” Obama in 2008? JFK in 1960? With his youth, soaring rhetoric, and rock star appeal, Obama has often invoked parallels with John F. Kennedy. But his campaign more closely resembles that of the other Kennedy, Robert in 1968.

In1968, as in 2008, America was a wounded nation, embroiled in an unpopular war, with ordinary Americans shaken by images of brutality perpetrated not by its enemies, but Americans themselves. In 1968 it was My Lai, in 2003, Abu Ghraib. Then, as now, actions taken in pursuing American hegemony shook Americans’ belief that they are a uniquely noble and honorable people, and challenged the notion of their moral superiority.

At his first campaign appearance at Kansas State University, RFK said “I am concerned – as I believe most Americans are concerned- that the course we are following at the present time is deeply wrong…I am concerned… that we are acting as if no other nation existed, against the judgment and desires of neutrals and our historic allies alike…. War is not an enterprise lightly to be undertaken, nor prolonged one moment past its absolute necessity.”

In 2008, of course, the economy has overtaken the war as the primary concern amongst voters, but the fact remains that the US is mired in self doubt about its role in the world. As Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek points out in his article, The Post American World, Pax Americana may be over, but America still has a leadership role to play – if it can come to terms with the rise of the rest of the world and learn to play nice, instead of behaving like the playground bully.

Kennedy concluded with these words, and if you close your eyes, you can hear Obama saying “Our country is in danger: not just from foreign enemies; but above all, from our own misguided policies – and what they can do to the nation that Thomas Jefferson once said was the last great hope of mankind. There is a contest on,not for the rule of America, but for the heart of America. In these next eight months we are going to decide what his country stands for…”

Like RFK, Obama is inspiring tremendous appeal within the young and disaffected. His words speak, like Kennedy’s, to a yearning for what made America great; not the America of Bush and Reagan, but the America of de Tocqueville and Jefferson. Kennedy said “… These are not ordinary times and this is not an ordinary election. At stake is not simply the leadership of our party and even our country. It is the right to the moral leadership of this planet.” But what is at stake is not so much America’s moral leadership, as America’s belief that it is worthy of such leadership.