Ask Not What JFK Can Do For Obama

(My response in today's online edition of the New York Times, to Frank Rich's Op-Ed column about Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and JFK, titled Ask Not What JFK Can Do For Obama.)

Frank Rich's Op-Ed on Obama's parallels with JFK is one of the most considered and compelling analyses of Obama's strengths that I have read. I am an Obama supporter for precisely the reasons that Rich cites: his integrity, his inclusiveness and his desire for a genuinely fresh approach to government, however naive that may be portrayed as sounding.

After the Democratic Debate last week, I felt far more positively toward Hillary Clinton than I have so far in the campaign, partly because of the more congenial relationship on stage between the two candidates (however genuine or not that may have been), and partly, I confess, because my wife was watching with me, and she and most women I know feel that this is Hillary's last best chance, whereas Obama is young and can fight again.

I don't mean that as the put-down of Hillary that it may at first seem: my wife and other friends who support her also point to her specificity on policy, her undeniably impressive intelligence, and the fact that she has experience on her side, not to mention her husband's experience, which again is not a put-down, because there are few spouses who could offer such valuable advice and experience themselves as Bill Clinton (I confess to having been a huge fan of his presidency, though less of his campaigning for his wife).

But Obama offers something different, aside from what I believe to be his outstanding leadership qualities: the chance to put a truly fresh face on America, and that, I believe, is what is electrifying many of his supporters as much as anything else.

Aside from what he may be able to achieve in Washington with a less adversarial style (although he is not afraid to pull punches: he drove home McCain's "100 years in Iraq" during the debate), the truly astonishing possibility that he may become America's ambassador to the world is one of the most thrilling aspects of his candidacy for President, and one of the most powerful echoes of JFK.

After what will have been eight years of George W Bush, a president who will surely find a place in history as the nadir of American policy-making, certainly in the past hundred years (and I pray that the first four or eight of the next hundred are not shaped by McCain), Obama offers the chance of presenting a rejuvenated America to the world: an America that can perhaps, as did JFK's in the 1960s (the Cuban Missile Crisis notwithstanding), bring a sense of poetry and inspiration to people's lives, along with the policies to match it.

No one knows the challenges the next President faces, just as no one could have fully anticipated that George W Bush would have to deal with 9/11. For that reason, I put my trust in my sense that Obama has the strength of character to rise to any challenge, to forge the policies and alliances necessary to move both the US and the world in a new direction.

I will not regret a win by Hillary Clinton, if that should be the result, because she is a fine candidate, and in any other year I am certain that I would be fired up with enthusiasm for her, and for the chance to have a woman president. But a decisive victory by Barack Obama on Tuesday will be proof of a dynamic new energy in America - and one that I hope and pray will carry him on to the Presidency.