The Daily Novel

‘Hail the new JFK’ was the London Sunday Times headline yesterday when commenting on Barack Obama’s resounding victory in the Iowa primary. Some Americans are thinking along the same lines. A valid question as anyone who watched the screaming voices of American youth which greeted his victory speech. Both of them struck a chord with the nation’s youth. Moreover both of them appealed to youthful idealism. It should be a reminder to all foreign commentators that beneath the greediness of American capialism and the neo-imperialism of George W. Bush and his friends, the kind of spirit which infused the founding fathers when they embarked on the Mayflower to found a better country, where they could be free to follow their own beliefs, and where decisions were made by the people rather than by a monarch.

There are also many contrasts between the two men. But before discussing these it is worth reflecting about the enthusiasm of the Sunday Times and of the London Times for this young black who few Americans and even fewer Brits had even heard of a year or two ago.

Now even that old Thunderer the London Times is not going to have any influence how people vote in the American election. But the London Times is of course the voice of Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the ultra Conservative Fox television channel and now the ultra Conservative Wall Street Journal, which is a powerful influence in America’s business community. Both of these news organisations are the natural supporters of American’s Republican Party

But Murdoch, although he is a businessman first and foremost and nothing if not right wing, has a long record of supporting the left of centre party when it suits him. Long before he became a force on the British media scene his Australian papers gave strong support for Australia’s Labour Party. And, of course, much to the dismay of British conservatives, he gave his enthusiastic support to Tony Blair’s New Labour.

It is of course early days in the American election which does not take place until next November. And it is by no means certain that Obama will be the Democratic candidate let alone the next President. But it is not at all fanciful to thnk that Murdoch may be thinking of lending him his support. The London Times also campares Obama with President Reagan, who was of course Margaret Thatcher’s bosom pal in a world that is vastly different from the world in which we live now.

The case for Obama being the new Reagan is not totally absurd. Alongside his campaign call for change, Obama has been stressing time and time again, his wish to unify America, and to use in his administration talented figures outside the Democratic Party. So like Reagan he was a unifier, but on all other counts he is totally unlike Reagan. It would be much more accurate to call him America’s Tony Blair.

But to return to the similarities and differences between Obama and JFK. Like Jack Kennedy, Barack Obama is a young Senator, relatively inexperienced in administration, compared with the Governors amongst the Presidential aspirants, and relatively unknown on the national scene. Also like Kennedy his is totally at home with the east coast elite. Kennedy because he was born into it. Obama because he has spent most of his working life at the Harvard Law School, and you can’t get more elite than that in America.

But now for the contrasts. Barack comes from a poor neighbourhood in Chicago. Jack Kennedy was born with a golden spoon in his mouth. His father made most of his money in the years of Prohibition and with some help from the Mafia who of course dominated the booze business in those far-off times when America had made drinking a crime with zeal which matches that of today’s Taliban. But by the time the young JFK was growing up, his father had become the ambassador to the UK, which gave him a entree into the international elite, because, of course, those were the years when the Anglo-American alliance had to be nurtured to defeat Nazism.

Unlike Obama Kennedy’s political ambitions were nurtured by both his parents. By his father because that would help his business and help him increase his translation from the bootleg trade to legitimate business. But above all by his mother, Rose,  who was hugely ambitious for her son. Obama’s mother died when he was aged 10 and his father, by all accounts, was  fairly inadequate. Obama’s ambition, and he is without doubt ambitious and has the self-belief to go with it, is very much his own man.

Kennedy was first and foremost a man of action rather than a scholar.  But he had many friends amongst the academic elite at Harvard. And quite unlike Obama had many friends in the media, notably Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post.

Obama, although he clearly has the same capacity as Kennedy to sway an audience, he has not yet shown, in my view, the kind of eloquence that fuelled the cry, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ But, it is early days yet, and we must remember that many of Kennedy’s best lines were coined by his speech writers.

If Obama is elected he will be the first black US President. Kennedy was of course at the heart of the WASP establishment. But WASP stands for White Anglo Saxon Protestant. Kennedy of course was a Catholic. And in 1959 there were many who thought that America would never elect a Roman Catholic who owed his allegience to a foreign Pope. Previously the only serious Roman Catholic contender for the White House, Al Smith, had lost for that very reason.

The one thing that is reasonably certain from poll in Iowa,  where you have to drive for miles if you want to see a black face, is that being black is no longer a bar to becoming President.

The other thing that counts in an American election is religion. Whether a declared atheist could become President in America 2008 is a question that is unlikely to be tested. As is the question of whether that born again Christian, Rupert Murdoch, would ever support a supporter of Richard Dawkins.

Obama has already let it be known that yesterday he was in church praying for the victims of the Kenyan massacres. Not only that, according to the reports I have read, he is a devout Christian. But he is clearly not a creationist.

It is still early days. And it is too soon to write off Hillary Clinton. There is nothing to suggest that America would not vote for a woman. Indeed there is a case for thinking that part of Hillary’s problem is that she too often behaves like men are expected to behave. There was a moment yesterday when the audience really warmed to her, when she admitted that she had been hurt by the Iowa defeat. She smiled, and exposed her quite femine vulnerability. Which she rarely does, after all the practice she has had in succeeding in the still largely male dominated fields of the law and politics.

She might do better if shows more of that side of her personality in the battles ahead.