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Article published Sep 23, 2007
Campaign 2008


JFK adviser picks his best, brightest
Kennedy's speechwriter campaigns for Obama


By SHIRA SCHOENBERG
Monitor staff


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Sep 23, 2007


When Meredith Senter first heard Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama speak, he reminded her of John F. Kennedy.

"I think it was his charisma," said Senter, who is executive director of Pleasant View Retirement Community in Concord. "His tone, his presence, the things he wants to do with the country, it mimics what Kennedy was saying."

It is a comparison Obama's campaign has been promoting, with a tour by onetime Kennedy adviser and speechwriter Ted Sorensen. On Thursday, Sorensen campaigned for Obama in Concord, Contoocook, Manchester and Exeter. He also spoke to editors and a reporter in an interview at the Monitor.

Sorensen drew parallels between the politicians in their style, their rhetoric and the obstacles they face.

"Obama has the ability, more than anyone since Kennedy, to speak from the heart, inspire and give hope to those who don't have it," Sorensen told an audience of about 20 at Pleasant View Retirement Community. "Obama is the candidate of hope and change, the same way Kennedy was the candidate of hope and change."

Sorensen started working for Kennedy when Kennedy was a U.S. senator from Massachusetts. He helped write Kennedy's 1960 inaugural address and worked on Kennedy's book, Profiles in Courage.
Sorensen said he supports Obama because he believes Obama has the best chance of winning the general election by appealing to new voters, thereby boosting Democrats in other races.

"I'm tired of losing to people who are

dangerous to our country," Sorensen said in the Monitor interview. "The current administration is the most reckless, dangerous administration in my lifetime. This country is more in danger than on 9/11, our standing in the world is at the lowest level of my lifetime, our influence on international organizations is less than it's ever been, and fiscally there's never been a more reckless administration."

Sorensen praised Obama for consistently opposing the war in Iraq and for representing change. Throughout, he drew parallels between Obama and Kennedy.

"Looking back at Kennedy, his success, his most important quality was judgment. Obama has judgment," Sorensen said. "More than any other president since Kennedy, Obama's lived abroad and knows how other countries see the United States."

Sorensen compared the two men's charisma, youth and good looks. "Like Kennedy, he's a natural on a public platform, on TV," he said.

There are indisputable similarities between the two politicians. Both are young and charismatic - Kennedy was 43 when elected; Obama would take office at 47. Both are Harvard-educated. Both ran grassroots campaigns. Kennedy was considered unelectable by some because of his Catholicism. Pundits today question whether the country would elect an African-American president.

Both politicians ran as U.S. senators and were criticized for their lack of experience, although Kennedy was in his second term and had served three terms in the House.

And both had visions of change. "Both were appealing to American idealism, to hope," said Stephen Wayne, a Georgetown University professor of government. "Both said it doesn't have to be like this. If we change our ways, our policies, bring new people in, we can change American for the better."

But there are also differences. Kennedy was born into a wealthy, political family in Massachusetts, where he attended top schools and vacationed on Cape Cod. According to his memoir, Obama grew up mostly without his father, raised by grandparents and by his mother, who at times supported the family on student grants. He spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, where his stepfather worked as an Army geologist and his mother taught English. He struggled with his identity as the son of a black Kenyan father and white mother from Kansas.

Kennedy, unlike Obama, had military credentials, having commanded a patrol torpedo boat in the South Pacific during World War II. Kennedy's older brother was killed in the war.

Although experts caution against drawing comparisons of two very different times, Kennedy was known as a foreign policy hawk, many scholars say, while Obama has made his stance against the war in Iraq a centerpiece of his campaign.

"Kennedy ran to the right of (Richard) Nixon," said Max Holland, editor of the Washington DeCoded website and author of The Kennedy Assassination Tapes. "Kennedy ran as a Cold Warrior. He was one of the leading politicians charging that (President) Eisenhower let the missile gap grow, that the Soviets were ahead of us and this was an acute danger. After the assassination, Sorensen paints him as a man of peace and reconciliation, that's not how it was in 1960."

In the Monitor interview, Sorensen described Kennedy as "very anti-war." He cited Kennedy's inaugural address, in which he said, "Only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed."

University of New Hampshire Political Science professor Dante Scala said the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba during Kennedy's presidency showed that he "had no problem sending troops into Cuba into a foreign policy misadventure. It's hard to square that with an anti-war message."

Bruce Miroff, political science professor at the State University of New York at Albany and author of Pragmatic Illusions: The Presidential Politics of John F. Kennedy, drew political distinctions between Kennedy and Obama. Kennedy positioned himself at the center of the Democratic Party, while Obama is trying to attract those who are disaffected.

"Obama is talking about more of a break from conventional politics than Kennedy represented," Miroff said. "Kennedy was, under the guise of novelty and dynamism, speaking for some pretty traditional values."

And one major political factor is too early to call - whether Obama, like Kennedy, can win primaries. "One of Kennedy's key victories in 1960 was to be able to go into Protestant West Virginia and win a primary. It convinced a lot of party bosses that Kennedy was a viable contender," Scala said. "The same challenge is before Obama. Can he bring together different types of voters and win in places like Iowa and New Hampshire where the electorate is mainly white? It's easy to make comparisons when no one's voted yet."

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He's not writing speeches for Obama, at least according to this article, he's just campaigning for him (stumping to an audience of 20? BIG NEWS!)

He was Kennedy's speechwriter, though.