With apologies to Lerner and Lowe, try to imagine these lines as if you were hearing them read in the voice of the late Richard Burton and see if they sound right to you .
Each evening, from December to December,
Before you drift to sleep upon your cot,
Think back on all the tales that you remember
Of Obamalot.
Ask ev'ry person if he's heard the story,
And tell it strong and clear if he has not,
That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory
Called Obamalot.
Earth to Ted, Caroline, Patrick and others who are marketing Sen. Barack Obama as the new JFK. Kennedy family, get over yourselves. If you really think Sen. Barack Obama is the new JFK, then maybe you didn't know the record of the real JFK from 1947 to 1963. Let's review the bidding.
If you live in Illinois and voted for JFK or Nixon in the 1960 election, I am sorry to be the one to do the math but even if that was your first vote you have at least passed your 68th birthday and are on your way to the "gettin up there" stage of life. So what? So that's a very long time to hold on to a myth that was never real to start with and expect that it will impress people whose only knowledge of JFK comes from fawning historians and aging journalists.
During 1962, Jack Kennedy was alive and well. Everyone called him Jack. No one ever called him "John Fitzgerald" in that mournful patter until after he was murdered by a communist in 1963. If you still doubt that and are an honest person, read Gerald Posner's book, Case Closed, and set aside your doubts for all time.
Jack Kennedy was a hawk most of his time in Congress and he was a legitimate anti-Communist but was not as showy on that topic as the always over-eager Dick Nixon. Once he was presented with a good excuse, Kennedy was perfectly willing to send in planes and troops against Castro because he didn't like his face and because Casto could have gotten control over Russian intermediate missiles that could reach Washington, DC in a matter of minutes. He did send 16,000 "advisors" to South Viet Nam. What would Jack Kennedy have done about Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden? My guess, Jack Kennedy's policy would have been a lot closer to that of George W. Bush than Barack Obama on national security.
Ted Kennedy now has the chutzpah to speak in the name of his brother's memory. If you read Jack Kennedy's speech in 1960 to the Baptist ministers in Houston, it is clear he would have opposed Ted Kennedy's de facto religious test to screen out believing Catholics for federal judgeships. In my opinion, he would have agreed with his little brother on some of Ted's social engineering schemes but would have fought him on others. Yes, I know, Jack Kennedy was born in a different time. That does not mean that he would be willing to give away the store now to terrorists who want to destroy this country. His first book in 1940, Why England Slept, was a clumsy attempt to rationalize his father's endorsement of Neville Chamberlain and appeasement. But unlike his bootlegger father, JFK served in uniform and he learned and grew up and finally became independent of his father even though it took a long time. Jack Kennedy did not like dictators even if he had to deal with them.
If he had lived in 2003, JFK could have asked one State Sen. Barack Obama, "So then Sen. Obama, the stated national policy of Congress since early in the Clinton administration has been regime change in Iraq, given that is the case, what's YOUR plan to rid the world of Saddam Hussein? Don't have one? Its OK by you to leave those 25 million souls at the mercy of Uday and Qusay?"
Jack Kennedy was willing to go to war to keep the isolated city of Berlin free when it was 112 miles behind Russian lines and almost impossible to defend. Can anyone honestly say that Barack Obama would care about a principle like that? I imagine Obama saying "what business would we have in Germany? Its not our country. Let them keep their own freedom. We have our own problems at home." Yup, we did and do and always will. But letting dictators know they can get away with missiles in Cuba or stonewall UN inspectors out of Iraq is not something that Barack Obama knows how to deal with. Maybe no one does. But you never start off by telling dictators in advance you will never risk sending troops in harm's way if freedom is threatened just because it is the freedom of people far away. JFK would have spotted the neo-isolationism of Sen. Obama and Sen. Ted Kennedy for what it is.
Ted Kennedy long ago did more damage to his brother's legacy than any Republican ever did. Now he pretends that as a younger brother some 45 years later he has the authority to lay the mantle of his older brother on the very untested Barack Obama just because he, Ted, is having a blood feud with Bill and Hillary Clinton. Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Barack Obama is a temporary plus among some older Democratic women who might otherwise go for Hillary. Ted's subliminal message to those women is "forget about Hillary breaking a glass ceiling and remember how you used to gush over my brother when we were all 50 years younger?"
In 1980, Ted Kennedy tried to restore Camelot for himself and dislodge the genial but bumbling Jimmy Carter. Ted could not move his own campaign passed Chappaquiddick Bridge. And therein lies the paradox. The Kennedy name will win friends for Obama in some quarters on Super Tuesday but could be poison in the general election if Obama gets that far. After all, Ted Kennedy is lucky to be at large himself. But apart from that, he has taken the most left-wing positions in the Senate for 45 years and some voters, including some Democratic voters, will wonder if the endorsement of Ted Kennedy in a general election might motivate Republicans in a way that they might not otherwise be motivated. It's a gamble.
