reflections on election 08

Over the summer I read An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy by Robert Dallek. It’s a great book about Kennedy’s life and presidency. If you have ever read the book or seen it you know that it is a monstrosity of a book, and no light read. What also is great about the book is that Dallek stays as close to the facts about Kennedy as he can. He doesn’t gossip about the what-ifs or the conspiracy of who assassinated Kennedy in 1963. Dallek, in fact does not write much on the actual assignation in the book. The fact that the author has decided to leave this out attributes the idea that what is important about the life of Kennedy is who he was and what he did as president not the conspiracy.
Kennedy won the 1960 presidential election. There is now less than a year before the presidential elections in 2008. There are many candidates running such as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and many more. This election has received much more hype than most usual elections. I think much of that hype is because there are so many people that are ready for a new president. Some of these people are joining for good reasons others just because they like to be on the bandwagon. In the midst of all the election talk and reading this book on Kennedy I could not help but think that Barack Obama has more than a little in common with JFK.
The first thing that made me compare the two was a news broadcast claiming that Obama did not have enough tenure in politics to run for president. Experience is a valued virtue. (Although the way older generations are treated in the United States it would not seem as though experience is all that important.) Obama however has only been a U.S. senator since 2004. Before that he served in the Illinois State Senate for eight years. Before he was an Illinois Senator you may want to check a bio about him. Kennedy gained a Senate seat in 1953 before becoming president in the 1960 election. Although Kennedy has more years as a U.S. Senator, Kennedy was also younger when he became president. There are other comparisons to make as well, such as that both went to Harvard at some point in their life. And that both men are dynamic speakers.
The last comparison I want to make is that each man, Kennedy and Obama, had to battle against criticism because of a society-inflicted stigma that marked him as being “different”. Please bear with me as I compare apples and oranges. Obama is African American. Kennedy was Catholic. Although both are very different, they both were/are road blocks to their presidency. I hope you notice the importance of Kennedy being Catholic. He was the first Catholic president. To this day he still is the only Catholic president. The second thought here, and the real comparison I am trying to make, is that a majority of people during Kennedy’s campaigning had to be convinced that a Catholic was capable of being president. This same comparison can be made about Obama. First people must realize that an African-American can be elected and that an African-American is more than capable. I note this because it was a great battle for Kennedy to convince the public of this and once he was elected the rest is history.
This country is a place that likes to root for the underdog, the Cinderella story. Barack Obama certainly is an underdog running against such people as Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, and John McCain. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time someone overcame a giant to win.