AJ DiCintio

Obama: No JFK
January 27, 2010

No one ought to express surprise that the result of the Massachusetts Senate race has not in the least shaken the faith of the American left, despite the fact that it came on the heels of Obama's crashing poll numbers and the gubernatorial results in Virginia and New Jersey.

After all, being a true believer "comes with the territory" as much for those who make a religion of politics and gods of politicians as it does for any person who buys into the lie that great possibilities flow from ridiculous hopes and foolish dreams.

For proof, consider that to the delight of his professors at the Chicago Political Machine (as well as Columbia and Harvard), post-Massachusetts Obama immediately fulfilled his responsibility as the nation's Liberal-in-Chief by offering a public testimonial of his faith in which he proclaimed that "The fault, dear Citizens, is not in my policies but in myself; for I have failed to explain that my policies reflect your values."

Yes, despite the shocking, enormous waste of the feckless Democratic Party Wish List Pork Travesty costing 800 billion borrowed dollars; the insulting, arrogant, dangerous power grab contained in the 2,000 pages of The Shameless Federal Government Healthcare Takeover Makeover Act of 2010; and the blatant immorality of the "generational theft" inherent in an outrageous plan to add ten trillion dollars to the national debt over the next decade, our most ideological president ever insists that his ACORN values and the "core values" of the American people are one and the same.

However, that's not the totality of the maniacal chutzpah with which we are being bombarded these days; for while there aren't many true believing media liberals willing to go as stone, raving loony dogmatic as Newsweek's Evan Thomas did when he characterized the president as a "sort of God standing above the country, above — above the world," there are plenty of them madly chanting the "It's Not Obama's Policies" mantra.

And there's the NYT's Frank Rich, who is too honest a liberal to obsequiously sing the president's praises but nevertheless holds out hope (that word again!) that Obama might "reboot" and therefore bravely respond to the stupidities and greedy excesses of the nation's financial industry in the manner that JFK reacted to what he perceived as the irresponsibility of Big Steel.

Now, my thinking is that the two situations are a billion light years apart in difference; but I'm not writing here about how Obama can bring a common sense attitude toward reforming Wall Street.

I am, however, heeding Duty's call to set the record straight — especially for young people who have been inculcated with the Liberal Myth regarding the 35th President — that our 44th is nothing like him, a truth understood once the authentic JFK is revealed:

The Camelot baloney aside, the story behind the real JFK and his most important legacy to the nation begins at the Democratic National Convention of 1960, where Kennedy controlled a "silent majority" of delegates, leaving the big noise that television craves to a small group of leftist retreads disguised under the name of "liberals.”

Indeed, it was during this convention that the nation was first introduced to the pretentious swarm of locusts, as TV producers ordered the black and white eyes of their cameras to remain tightly focused on galleries from which an annoying drone buzzed an allegiance to Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic standard-bearer in 1952 and 1956.

(Stevenson was also supported with more decorum but no less enthusiasm by members of the liberal aristocracy, most notably Eleanor Roosevelt.)

The obnoxious whining of the common liberals as well as the decorous entreaties offered by their limousine brothers and sisters may have made an impact on everyone’s ears, but they had no effect at all on the minds of Kennedy’s delegates, who remained far (not just in distance) from that madding crowd and successfully nominated their man.

Neither did the liberal droning make the slightest impression on Kennedy’s mind; for he didn’t select a liberal as his running mate (whether of the VW Bug or Caddy Limo variety).

No, he chose Lyndon Johnson, the steak for dinner cowboy from Texas whom salad nibbling liberals feared would, one day, surely do something as uncouth as pull up his shirt to show off the scar from a recent gallbladder operation, thereby providing the French with yet another opportunity to brag nous vous avons dit ainsi ("We told you so”) regarding American crudity.

After his victorious campaign, Kennedy once again turned a deaf mind to liberal demands, for instance, by rejecting calls for Stevenson to serve as Secretary of State. In doing so, Kennedy was cruel to liberals only to be kind to the nation as he deposited Mr. Stevenson in an innocuous New York City neighborhood where, despite the famous hole in the sole of his shoe, he could walk to his job as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Next, Kennedy chose C. Douglas Dillon, a Republican who had served in the Eisenhower administration, to serve as Secretary of the Treasury, rather than John Kenneth Galbraith, an economist who was an icon among liberals.

Then, to make certain the Democratic left wouldn’t interpret the selection of Dillon as an unintentional slight, JFK gave Galbraith an ambassadorial kick in his Keynesian backside, a boot so powerful it sent the professor reeling ivory-towered head over limousine liberal heels all the way to India, far from the Department of the Treasury in Washington and the Departments of Reality on Wall and Main Streets.

With those key facts about JFK on the table, one question remains: What imagery best captures his legacy?

To that question there is, unfortunately, no easy answer because with respect to it, Americans fall into two compelling camps.

One group looks to JFK's Irish roots to argue the president taught us to inflict political wounds on liberals and then add further pain by splashing the gashes with generous doses of Irish whiskey.

Keeping its focus on American traditions, the other maintains that Kennedy loved nothing better than using his fastball to brush liberal foreign policy back to its proper home at the corrupt, spineless UN; his curveball to send liberal tax and spend economic policy sprawling on the ground; and his slider to ship liberal intellectuals on a walk to the dugout that seemed as far and lonely as a passage to India.

With respect to which group's imagery is superior, readers will, of course, choose according to their own tastes.

I, myself, give the edge to the second because I believe all common sense Americans can agree that at every opportunity liberals and liberalism should be given an earful of that classic baseball exclamation that follows the call of a third strike.

Thus, with images and language from a sport that the Senate race in Massachusetts taught us is perfectly alien to the effete, detached ideologues of the American left, this piece ends, having offered incontrovertible proof that there is as much chance Obama will reboot himself as JFK as there was that JFK would ever have redefined himself as an Obama.