When I was reading this column by Jonathan Rauch about “Obama Resistance Complex” (hat tip: AmbivaBlog), one passage (in conversation with his imaginary psychotherapist) caught me up short:
We don’t need another Jimmy Carter.
Carter, humph. Have you considered that Obama might be a JFK?
God, I hope Barack Obama isn’t another JFK. I’d had it up to here with JFK nostalgia 40 years ago. Other than the bright, hopeful feeling so many Democrats had during the brief Kennedy Administration too much of what JFK is credited with should actually be bestowed on the politically savvy LBJ and too much of what JFK should be blamed for is forgotten.
The quality of which I’m most suspicious in John Kennedy is precisely the same one that I find the most troubling in George Bush. I’m not the most concerned about George Bush’s incoherence or religion or being a recovering alcoholic or his bullheadedness or any of the other characteristics that bug so many people so much. I’m most troubled by his view of risk and reward which I find completely incomprehensible and which I think is in almost perfect alignment with John Kennedy’s and probably for the same reason.
I, for one, don’t want another JFK or, even worse, another Carter or another Nixon or even another Reagan, Rooselvelt, or Truman. I don’t want another Harding (we just had one of those).
If I absolutely had to have another anything, it might well be another Eisenhower.
But I don’t want another anything. I’d like an original, please.
