Debating JFK

Tuesday's debate takes place in the shadow of JFK's legacy. Al Gore, George W. Bush, and Kennedy have much in common, but this year's candidates pale in comparison to the real thing.

By Seth Gitell

Next tuesday, Texas governor George W. Bush and Vice-President Albert D. Gore Jr. will converge on UMass Boston's Columbia Point campus to joust in the shadow of one of the nation's most high-profile political shrines: the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library. Both candidates made much of JFK's legacy at their conventions -- Bush's video biography featured footage of Kennedy, and Gore chose to hold his convention in Los Angeles, the site of the 1960 convention that nominated him. But both candidates look parochial and timid in comparison to the 35th president.

Bush was right to be scared of coming here. And Gore, who's betrayed not one hint of nervousness about the coming debate, should be. Even if no one says it, many observers of the debate -- the press, the pundits, and the public -- will be comparing GWB and ADG to JFK. And there's simply no way the two men running for president will measure up. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen: Al? George? You're no Jack Kennedy. Not even close.

And we're worse off for it.

It's no wonder that the Kennedy Library is the most visited presidential library: it's a marvel of myth-making. I.M. Pei's magnificent design juts out dramatically into Dorchester Bay; inside, the smartly edited speeches and carefully chosen artifacts show Kennedy at his best. But strip away the schmaltz and you see a memorial to a youthful, energetic candidate who, by the time of his 1960 candidacy, had already experienced enough of life, government, and war to have settled on a coherent world view that synthesized foreign and domestic policies. Kennedy took full advantage of the blessings of his upbringing and developed a strong sense of himself -- outside the shadow of his father. Both Bush and Gore also could have done the same as young men, but they didn't.

On the surface, Kennedy seems to have quite a bit in common with Gore and Bush. All three grew up as sons of privilege and scions of powerful men. Joseph P. Kennedy, the president's father, was the wealthiest of the three patriarchs. A Harvard graduate and self-made businessman, he grew rich from ventures in banking, liquor, real estate, Hollywood, and the stock market. Bush's father, George Herbert Walker Bush, made his money in the oil business and then embarked on public service in Congress, an ambassadorship to China, and, ultimately, the presidency. Al Gore Sr. was an influential senator; his children grew up in DC's Fairfax Hotel, which gave their father easy access to his family while he worked in the Senate.

The experts compare Bush and Gore with JFK Theodore Sorensen, former special counsel to President Kennedy and author of Kennedy "Clearly, George W. Bush, who has never served in Washington, does not have knowledge of national and international issues on a par with President Kennedy. Al Gore, on the other hand, has served in both the House and Senate. Like Kennedy, after a brief stint in journalism, he's spent the rest of his life in public service. Still, Kennedy was an extraordinary politician, and we haven't seen his like since. . . . Political elocution has certainly changed in 40 years. Zingers were not as important then, and neither were applause lines. Nixon, as well as Kennedy, concentrated on substance." Gerard Doherty, real-estate lawyer and chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party during Kennedy's presidency "The last time I saw him was October 17, 1963. We had the largest fundraiser for Kennedy at that time -- $700,000. That's 7000 tickets at 100 bucks a pop. We had it in the Armory on Commonwealth Ave. We outgrew the Armory and went into the garage. The president was very sensitive to people sitting in the garage. He had dinner in the main armory and had dessert in the garage." Robert Dallek, professor of history at Boston University and author of Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times and the forthcoming American Brahmin: John F. Kennedy and His Times "Bush certainly has much less experience than what John Kennedy had by the time he ran for president. Al Gore, of course, is in many ways a match for Kennedy. He had a long career in the House and Senate, and eight years as vice-president. Kennedy was a much more engaging personality -- at least in public. They do share a similar background in that they are both quite cerebral. My impression of George W. Bush is that he is quite unintellectual. I don't think he has the energy to be anti-intellectual. . . . All three men had very strong, successful, prominent fathers. This is an interesting mix -- how do they get out of the shadow of their fathers? Kennedy once went to an American Jewish group in Boston and said, `I'm running for Senate -- not my father.' " Thomas O'Connor, university historian, Boston College "John Kennedy was somebody. Some of his appeal was based on the fact that he could combine informality and formality. He was a man who had a natural grace. If something unusual happened, he had the capacity of turning it aside with a deft touch. Kennedy was also a Bostonian and a Harvard man. He took on the natural tendency of the Yankees not to go on display -- to be understated." David Horowitz, conservative columnist and co-author (with Peter Collier) of The Kennedys: An American Drama "Kennedy was a Reagan Democrat. He was a hawk on defense. Al Gore has gutted the American military. Kennedy was a militant anti-communist. Gore has communists in his campaign in top levels -- Donna Brazile, for example. Kennedy was for a capital-gains tax cut and a balanced budget. Gore has already turned a $300 million surplus into a $900 million deficit by the latest count. John F. Kennedy was a charmer. Gore . . . " Sheldon Stern, former Kennedy Library historian "Kennedy had his problems as a candidate. He was considered too young. Eisenhower was very popular. His religion was a problem. All three were members of very successful political families -- although in Kennedy's case it was in a way a disadvantage because his father had been so badly discredited as an appeaser during World War II. Kennedy read a great deal, but Gore is far more of a policy type than Kennedy was. Kennedy was not a master of details."

A 17-minute introductory video to JFK's life at the library doesn't back away from Kennedy's privileged background; it shows how as a young man Kennedy not only acknowledged it, but used it to his advantage. We hear Kennedy's voice describing his college years -- the same years his father served as Franklin D. Roosevelt's ambassador to Great Britain. "I took half a year off in 1939 to work in the American embassy in Paris," Kennedy says, adding that he took time off from that posting to tour Europe, including Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

The contrast here with George W. Bush is striking. Just as the elder Kennedy presided over the chancellery in London at a time of international ferment, the elder Bush served as Nixon's ambassador to the United Nations and to the People's Republic of China right after Nixon made his famous visit to China. But whereas Kennedy used his father's diplomatic connections as a chance to learn about the world, the younger Bush appears to have deliberately shunned any experience offered by his father's foreign postings. According to Bill Minutaglio's biography of Bush, First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty (Times Books, 1999), Bush remained thoroughly apolitical throughout Watergate and détente, even as his father appeared on television with Nixon. Critics of Kennedy say that the young man was an unfocused, pleasure-seeking youth who used his father's credentials to pad his résumé. Even if we accept that view, however, we still end up with a young candidate who was far more engaged with the volatile world around him than Bush ever was.

There's no hint in the Kennedy Library -- or in other treatments of Kennedy's life, for that matter -- that Kennedy's early years were anything other than what they were: life in a wealthy but highly competitive family. The library is filled with photos of the young Kennedys at play, and there's a striking picture of the whole clan decked out in black-tie formal wear before a London engagement. Compare this honest embrace of the good life with the bizarre identity issues that both Bush and Gore seem to struggle with. At nearly every opportunity, Gore stresses his deep roots in Tennessee. During his acceptance speech in Los Angeles, Gore said more about his father's time as a schoolteacher than as a US senator. And his elite education at St. Albans School in Washington, DC, and Harvard University is the last thing that Gore, the fighting populist, wants us hear about.

Bush, in his own way, is just as disingenuous about his upbringing. Sure, he grew up in Midland, Texas -- but his father soon sent him off to the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and then to Yale. After that, Bush earned an MBA from Harvard. His education was just as elite as that of Kennedy, who attended the Choate School in Connecticut and then went to Harvard. But you didn't hear much about Andover in the down-home movie about Bush screened at the Republican convention in Philadelphia.

To be fair, presidential politics today are much different from presidential politics circa 1960. Now more than ever, America is a nation of meritocrats, and the public simply doesn't trust anyone seen as having achieved success by clutching his daddy's coattails. Contrast that with Kennedy's time, when people still remembered Franklin D. Roosevelt, another son of privilege who appealed to the working masses.

Today, both Bush and Gore must downplay their elite upbringings. Bush, in particular, is often accused of having gotten where he is on the strength of his famous father's name. But the thing about Kennedy is that he wore his privilege easily. Kennedy acknowledged his upbringing with grace. Although Bush and Gore may not have that option, a little less contrived humility might go a long way. In Gore's case, that means accepting that he's a product of both Tennessee and Washington, DC. In Bush's case, that means acknowledging that he's as much a product of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they drop their r's, as he is of Midland, Texas, where they drop their g's -- as he is so fond of doing.

Kennedy was a product of both Boston and America as a whole -- and he never tried to hide it. The 1965 biography Kennedy (written by Theodore Sorensen, Kennedy's speechwriter, special counsel, and literary alter ego) serves as the literary equivalent of a convention bio-pic. Contrast Gore's reminiscences of his schoolteacher father and Bush's recollections of life in Midland with what Sorensen had to say: "Jack Kennedy loved Boston and Boston loved Jack Kennedy, but he was always more than a Bostonian. . . . He was born in the Boston suburb of Brookline. He was brought up in his formative years in Bronxville, New York, where his father had moved the entire family in the belief that an Irish Catholic businessman and his children would have less opportunity in Boston. . . . When he launched his first campaign in 1946 . . . for Congress in Boston's hard-boiled Eleventh District, from which James Michael Curley was retiring, he knew almost no one in the city except his grandfather. "

As much as Kennedy relied on his father's contacts and connections throughout his early adulthood, he, like Gore and Bush, struggled to escape his father's shadow. Although Kennedy's father could be a megalomaniac, JFK seems to have done a credible job of becoming his own man. His first book, Why England Slept, a paean to interventionism, can be read as a renunciation of the discredited isolationist views of his old man. (Nonetheless, Kennedy's strident anti-communism echoed his father's hatred of what was coming out of Moscow, and JFK relied -- to a degree -- on his father's advice when appointing members of his cabinet.)

As for Al Gore, his watershed act as a young adult was to enlist in the Army -- a decision he agonized over while at Harvard. But was it an act of independence? His father, after all, was a dove. Or was it to protect Al Gore Sr.'s political interests? By 1976, Gore found himself following in his father's footsteps as a congressman from Tennessee -- after a stint in journalism (a detour that Kennedy made as well). By 1992, when he was elected vice-president, Gore had finally eclipsed his father's accomplishments. His funeral oration for his father in December 1998 is widely regarded as one of his best speeches, and one of his most authentic. Gore finally seems to be making progress in moving beyond his father's legacy.

Bush is a different story. This first-born son lost an election for Congress in 1978 and then, like his father, went into the oil business. Whereas both Kennedy and Gore fashioned successful careers in Congress, Bush didn't emerge with much to show from his experience with Texas Tea. Not until he used his connections to get a two percent piece of the Texas Rangers did he begin to see any success in his own right. In 1994, he ventured back into politics, defeating Ann Richards to win the Texas governorship, which set him up to run for the Republican presidential nomination. But he still labors in his father's shadow. When Bush thought he needed foreign-policy seasoning, he hastily rushed out to select Dick Cheney, his father's secretary of defense, as his running mate. And we know how that has turned out. Perhaps Ronald Reagan Jr. summed up Bush's career best: "He was elected governor of Texas, and before that he ran a baseball team and lost a lot of other people's money in the oil business. But what has happened in the intervening five years to make people believe he'd be a good president? What is his accomplishment? That he's no longer an obnoxious drunk?"

Surely one of the experiences that shaped Kennedy -- and perhaps gave him the courage to come to terms with his powerful father -- was his service in World War II. Both Kennedy and his elder brother, Joseph P. Kennedy II, joined the Navy. Jack, an accomplished amateur sailor, landed service on a PT boat. His brother Joe became a pilot. At this juncture in his life, Kennedy's ambitions were hazy, but having published his Harvard senior thesis Why England Slept, his ambitions -- to the extent they could be defined -- leaned toward journalism. Those plans were altered, however, when Joe, the golden boy and the object of his father's political ambitions, died after he volunteered to pilot a plane loaded with explosives into a V-1 bomb base. (The plan was that he would parachute to safety before the crash.)

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Seth Gitell can be reached at sgitell@phx.com.