Obama/Kennedy vs. McCain/Goldwater

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/05/21/obama_jfk/

Obama/Kennedy vs. McCain/Goldwater

This year's presidential contest is shaping up as the 1964 campaign that never happened

By David Talbot



May 21, 2008 | If John McCain is running for George W. Bush's third presidential term, as Democrats have suggested, Barack Obama is campaigning for John F. Kennedy's second term.

That was driven home again this week when the Obama and McCain campaigns squared off over the question of whether the United States should negotiate with its enemies. Obama said this kind of diplomacy is a sign of strength. "Strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries," the Democratic candidate told a rally in Oregon on Monday.

To McCain, however, this kind of talk demonstrates Obama's naiveté and "reckless judgment." Bush himself jump-started the latest round in this fracas, suggesting that Obama's calls for diplomatic engagement amounted to "appeasement" of the forces of terror.

Is talking with our enemies a sign of strong and intelligent -- or weak and deluded -- leadership? This debate is shaping up as one of the major themes of the 2008 campaign -- just as it was in the 1964 presidential race before JFK was shot down in Dallas in November 1963.

Obama clearly understands this historical parallel and has often invoked JFK's inaugural address to support his calls for diplomacy, reminding Americans that Kennedy said we should "never negotiate out of fear, but ... never fear to negotiate." This was a controversial idea during the deep chill of the Cold War -- after years of bellicose propaganda that demonized Communist leaders as evil and untrustworthy foes who only understood force. And it is equally controversial idea today, after the Bush-Cheney regime's endless war on terror.

snip//

A 71-year-old former military man is clearly not the leader America needs at this moment in its history. We need a leader who recognizes "that the United States is neither omnipotent or omniscient, that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind, that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity, and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem." A president who understands that "equating negotiations with appeasement and substituting rigidity for firmness" is "the pathway to war."

This was President John F. Kennedy. And it could be President Barack Obama.