USA: Historical parallels drawn between Barack Obama, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy

Record ID: 245124
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  • Title: USA: Historical parallels drawn between Barack Obama, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy
  • Date: 14th January 2009
  • Summary: WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES (RECENT) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN DARRYL WEST SAYING: "John Kennedy was probably our most inspirational president in the post-war period. Obama has certain elements in common with Kennedy. Since they're both great orators; they're both personally inspiring. Each was successful in getting a new generation of young people in the political process. So I think in a lot of respects Obama takes cues from John Kennedy and the role that he played in American politics."
  • Embargoed: 29th January 2009 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: History,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVALSS1UGSQFVGQ3HFHIBOPCJDI
  • Story Text: The weekend before his inauguration as the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama will board a train in Philadelphia and travel to Washington, making stops in Wilmington, Delaware and in Baltimore -- the same route that Abraham Lincoln traveled before his own inauguration.
    Obama's admiration for Lincoln is no secret. Sales for Team of Rivals, a popular Lincoln biography skyrocketed after Obama mentioned he was reading the book.
    A certain cadre of historians and pundits look to the Kennedy years as the Obama template. Indeed, Obama enters office as young man, as did Kennedy. Obama has a broad smile and a charismatic style which has captured the world's imagination, as did Kennedy. Obama enters the White House with a vision for America that differs dramatically from his predecessors, just as John F. Kennedy in 1960.
    "I think in a lot of respects Obama takes cues from John Kennedy and the role that he played in American politics," said historian Darryl West.
    Perhaps more strikingly, Obama and Lincoln launched their political careers in the Illinois state legislature, a unlikely perch on the American political landscape from which a view to the White House is well beyond the horizon. Obama rose to prominence on the strength of his oratory at the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston. Lincoln, for his part, caught the attention of newspaper editors with his rhetoric at a series of debates with rival Stephen Douglas. Both Obama and Lincoln played an unconventional gambit, installing their chief political opponents at key positions in their administrations. Hillary Clinton will serve as Obama's Secretary of State, the same office that William H. Seward served his political nemesis, Abraham Lincoln.
    But the most apparent parallel is that both Obama and Lincoln assume the presidency at a moment of national peril. Lincoln, of course, was on the verge of a fractured Union which soon erupted in civil war. And, Obama enters the White House hampered by a fractured economy, amid forecasts of grave consequences to America's place in the world.
    Obama has already consulted with U.S. President George W. Bush, along with the other former Presidents -- George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter -- on what to expect in the new job. But historians examining Obama's situation caution that treating history as a guide for formulating present-day strategy may be rife with danger, and that historic parallels should not be more than a political parlour game.
    "If you are trying to draw lesson from the past, sometimes the present is different from the past and you need to make adjustments appropriate for the current era, not some old era that you are attempting to recreate," said Darry West, the historian.
    That said, on Inauguration Day, Barack Obama will swear an oath of office -- placing his hand on the very same Bible once used for a similar occasion by Abraham Lincoln.
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