Ever since Barack Obama emerged as a serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination commentators have been falling over themselves to evoke the memory of John F. Kennedy. Obama’s youth, short time in the senate, and relentless message of change all stir memories of the handsome young upstart who squeaked the presidency in 1960. With the endorsement of Obama’s candidacy by several senior Kennedys in late January, the comparisons became more frequent. “A president like my father”, Caroline Kennedy called Obama. The New York Times evoked Kennedy’s most successful book when it referred to Obama’s race speech as a “Profile in Courage”.

With JFK still generally revered by most Americans, particularly the white working-class voters Obama desperately needs to win over, it’s a comparison Obama’s people are happy to see made (despite the odd snipe by commentators). The truth is, though, that John F. Kennedy and Obama came from very different places politically - and had very different concepts of “change”.

Obama’s campaign has been built on a solid platform of opposition to the Iraq war. Indeed, if Obama hadn’t been able to contrast his own opposition to Hillary’s mixed record, it’s highly unlikely his campaign would have gathered the momentum - and the money - it needed to seriously compete. With his willingness to negotiate with so-called “rogue states”, and to rule out the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, Obama has nailed his colours pretty clearly to the dove mast.

The contrast with the Kennedy campaign of 1960 couldn’t be clearer. Kennedy’s brand of change, and its attendant criticism of the preceding eight years of Republican rule, was unequivocally hawkish.

In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln said the question was whether this nation could exist half-slave or half-free. In the election of 1960, and with the world around us, the question is whether the world will exist half-slave or half-free, whether it will move in the direction of freedom, in the direction of the road that we are taking, or whether it will move in the direction of slavery… We discuss tonight domestic issues, but I would not want that to be any implication to be given that this does not involve directly our struggle with Mr. Khrushchev for survival.

So Kennedy began the opening speech of his famous debate with opponent Richard Nixon. Granted, Kennedy discussed poverty at length in his campaign, and also lent his support to the nascent civil rights movement. But his most progressive ideas were always couched in the rhetoric of the Cold War. “The kind of country we have here, the kind of society we have, the kind of strength we build in the United States will be the defense of freedom,” he went on in his opening speech. If we do well here, if we meet our obligations, if we’re moving ahead, then I think freedom will be secure around the world. If we fail, then freedom fails.”¹

Indeed, as George Packer points out, Kennedy’s message of hope was coded to speak to insecurities bubbling under the surface of a nation allegedly at east with itself. In an atmosphere of steady-as-she-goes conservatism - the 1950s, with their fetishising of conformity, had just ended - Kennedy brought to the surface fears about the economy and America’s place in the world that had previously been unspoken. Obama, by contrast, faces a nation in turmoil, where divisions over the best response to myriad challenges have almost made civilised discussion impossible. This means his message of hope, his focus on the positive, can be much more effective.

So is the strange, and ultimately sad, Kennedy story of no real relevance to the Obama campaign? Not so fast. Because there is a Kennedy campaign that Obama has much more in common with - the 1968 campaign of John’s little brother, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

Like Obama, “Bobby” built his campaign on a central platform of opposition to an unpopular war. Like Obama, he faced a fight for the nomination with Democratic party royalty whose impeccable liberal credentials had been tarnished by support for that war: vice-president Hubert H. Humphrey (Kennedy had already seen off the previous presumptive nominee, the Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson). Like Obama, he campaigned on a leftist platform - focusing on poverty, public services, and civil rights - but proved effective at transcending traditional party affiliations.

While John’s radicalism was mostly rhetoric - once he entered power, his administration became known for a gradualist approach to issues like civil rights that exasperated activists - Robert’s was genuine: in place of John’s tax cut, Robert called for substantial tax rises to fund social programs; to John’s enthusiastic Cold War saber-rattling, Robert proposed a retreat from the US’ global commitments and from the military-industrial complex that had spiraled since the start of World War II.

While Obama’s program can’t match Robert’s for radicalism, the thrust and theme of his campaign is identical. Where John sought to identify the nagging concerns of a nation grown cosy after years of peace, Robert spoke up to the desire of a nation wracked by war and division for change. Obama’s stance as the “change candidate” has a clear precedent. While the standard approach is to attempt to achieve unity through compromise, Kennedy sought to build a new consensus on ground that had previously been identified with the hard left - essentially the same trick Obama hopes to pull off, a generation later, in 2008. Kennedy’s slogan, a quote from George Bernard Shaw - “Some men see things as they are and say ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and say, ‘Why not?’” - stands out as a more lyrical version of Obama’s “yes we can”.

So what can the campaign of Robert Kennedy - whose closest relatives, ironically, have broken ranks with the rest of the clan to back Hillary - tell us about Obama’s chances? Of course, Robert Kennedy was never put to the general electoral test. His campaign ended, not with a concession speech, but with a victory party - after the Californian primary on June 5. It was ended, not by polls or delegate counts, but by Sirhan Sirhan, the young Palestinian who shot the Senator in the back and head at celebrations in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Psephologists disagree about the chances Kennedy’s radical campaign would have had against the republican nominee, Richard Nixon. When I met Senator Ted Kennedy, the youngest of the Kennedy brothers in 2004, he confessed he was unsure whether Robert would have even beaten Humphrey, who had the support of most of congress, to the Democratic nomination. “I don’t know,” he said frankly. “We had a long way to go.”

What’s clear, though, is that Kennedy had several factors in his favour which Obama can’t rely on. Both men score highly in both party and national polls among young people. But that demographic is far smaller now than it was in Kennedy’s time. The 1960s were the coming of age of the so-called “baby boom” generation, children born in 1945-7 in the postwar boom. As a result, the proportion of people in the US aged 18-25 was higher than ever. It was these “boomers” who protested in the universities, became the first hippies - and fought in the Vietnam war. These young people were the bedrock of Kennedy’s campaign.

The same is true of Obama’s campaign, but almost everything else has changed. Those same baby boomers are entering retirement, leaving America with a chronically aging population. The younger generation, by contrast, is smaller than ever, thanks to several decades of working women with easy access to birth control. And they’re less likely than ever to vote.

It is possible that aging boomers will be inspired enough by Obama’s rhetoric of change - and his resemblance to the Kennedy campaign - to carry him to victory. And blacks, who supported Kennedy in droves, are flocking to Obama. But another core Kennedy constituency, Hispanics, aren’t Obama’s to count on. Kennedy’s support for firebrand activist César Chávez made him a hero to many “Chicanos” (as Hispanics were generally called then). This constituency, unlike the youth vote, has only grown in the intervening years. But Obama’s support among Hispanics now, except the young, is poor.

With the youth vote less powerful, and the minority vote fractured, Obama may face an uphill struggle to clinch the nomination - and then, of course, the presidency. But then, few expected Kennedy’s campaign to obtain such momentum - or for the formerly overshadowed brother to prove such a compelling orator and eloquent advocate for the poor. In these more centrist days, it would be too much to expect that Obama might finish what Robert Kennedy started. But with America once more crying out for a change of direction, for a politics of compassion and co-operation, it seems possible a measure of Kennedy’s vision might be achieved.

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