The Kennedy Mystique: Democrat's Winning Path to the White House

With an ever expanding field of Democrat candidates for the 2020 presidential nomination, it is becoming confusing even for political junkies to keep up with those throwing their hates in the ring.  Indeed, I don't grasp why some are even doing so since they are virtual unknowns outside of their home states and seemingly lack the charisma needed to stand out in the pack of candidates which spans every age bracket, gender, skin color and, for the first Winnowing out a winner will be a challenge for the Democrat Party, especially given, in my view, the deranged Bernie cult followers noted in a prior post. A piece in Politico looks at the one consistent model for Democrat success in winning the White House: use the Kennedy style and call for generational change that put JFK in the White House and worked to degrees for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.  A second piece at NBC News looks at a seeming desire for a younger standard bearer than Sanders or Joe Biden.  Here are highlights from Politico:

For the past six decades, Democrats have been mesmerized by the Kennedy style, like adult children searching for the forever-young father who left them before his time. The pressure for candidates to fit the Kennedy mold—in looks, style and political bearing—became so oppressive that the writer Garry Wills coined a term for it: “The Kennedy imprisonment.” 

In more recent years, such candidates felt freer to adopt their own mannerisms but their political posture remained pure JFK: that of the young and earnest outsider, alone on the stage, a prince suffused in a golden aura of charisma. Now, as the 2020 contenders emerge from the wings, the Kennedy ghost is alive again, mostly in the person of former Texas Rep. Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke. Unlike the JFK mannequins, he has chosen to ape the tousled Bobby variant of the Kennedy style, honed after Dallas, that of the surviving brother searching for meaning in a strange and violent world. He even shares Bobby Kennedy’s first two names. But the 46-year-old O’Rourke must compete with an even younger Kennedy clone—the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend (Ind.), Pete Buttigieg, who (naturally) won the JFK Library’s Profile in Courage essay contest in 2000 as a sweaty-palmed high school senior. A decade later, in 2015, he won the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award from the Kennedy School at Harvard. Among all the mini-dramas within the still-growing Democratic field, the 2020 primaries will also be a test of whether, after 60 years, after the fraying of the Kennedy family dynasty, and after the emergence of the #MeToo movement, the character of a Kennedyesque charismatic loner still stirs the Democratic imagination and excites the passions of the electorate. It’s a question that goes beyond just the horse-race odds of O’Rourke and Buttigieg, and to the core of the party’s ability to win the White House. [E]ven if some of the outward trappings of the Kennedy image—the high fashion, the self-satisfied smile—have fallen out of vogue, the Kennedy approach to politics and, especially, to winning a presidential election as a Democrat, are as relevant in 2020 as they were in 1960. Far from being an anachronism, JFK’s evangelistic style of leadership is still the Democrats’ most potent weapon. His is not just a proven route to the White House, but has been, for more than a half century, literally the only route for a Democrat to win the White House. This is an imprisonment the Democrats might choose to end at their peril.

John F. Kennedy was neither the most liberal nor the best-credentialed Democrat in the 1960 primaries, but he encapsulated the hopes and dreams of the electorate. He evoked themes that proved irresistible to liberals (generational change, a we-can-do-better scolding of a neglectful Republican stewardship, the need for national unity), but were vague enough not to alienate moderates who might be fearful of overreach.

While Kennedy’s persona—his glamour, sex appeal, erudition and speaking style—was a big part of his success, there was a more durable truth undergirding his breakthrough: Voters love Democratic values and aspirations, but are terrified of Democratic legislation. Kennedy’s vagueness on policy was as important to his success as his precision in articulating the challenges of the ’60s was.

In both the primaries and the general election, Kennedy stood accused of lacking specific policy proposals. But his reluctance to put a price tag on every priority, to make firm, unbreakable commitments, or to attach his name to every overloaded barge of a bill being pulled through the Senate served him well: Liberals saw a candidate who shared their fondest beliefs, while moderates saw a president whom they could trust to resist partisanship in favor of the broader national interest. The record of the past 50-plus years is irrefutable: Whenever the party has nominated a former vice president (Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Walter Mondale in 1984, Al Gore in 2000) or a similar figure of long exposure to the public eye, such as Hillary Clinton in 2016, he or she has fallen short. The same has been the case with policy-oriented liberals like George McGovern in ’72 and Michael Dukakis in ’88. The little-known Bill Clinton, however, passed around copies of a photo of himself as a bedazzled Boys Nation recruit pumping President Kennedy’s hand on the White House lawn. He preached a Kennedyesque message of generational change and we-can-do-better idealism to capture the party’s heart. Despite generating a suspicion that he put strategy ahead of principle, he cruised to two victories. The largely unknown Barack Obama asserted his own Camelot connection by campaigning alongside Ted and Caroline Kennedy, while Caroline penned a New York Times op-ed predicting he would be “A President Like My Father.” Obama’s message of hope and change was castigated as vague and empty, but it served the crucial purpose of inspiring liberals without alarming moderates. He won twice. Finally, there was Jimmy Carter, who seemingly came out of nowhere to win the Democratic nomination in 1976. He too evoked generational change and a hopeful, I’ll-never-lie-to-you message, and prevailed in a close race.

Kerry’s campaign serves best, perhaps, as an object lesson in what parts of the Kennedy legacy—the looks, the accent, the association with actual Kennedy relatives—have diminished in significance over time, and which remain evergreen: youth, vigor, a sense of high purpose.

There is, of course, another, less admirable, aspect to Kennedy’s political style: maintaining a sense of what might generously be called flexibility on the issues, which may be every bit as important to achieving victory as the others.

Should Beto succeed, it won’t be because of his mere resemblance to the Kennedys—a physical coincidence that elicits as much eye-rolling as admiration. Voters under 55 have no memory of the living Bobby Kennedy, even if a constant diet of miniseries and docudramas might lead them to think otherwise. Rather, Beto’s success would be built on the freshness of his presentation, his skateboarding spontaneity, his sense of being a man apart—apart from the corruption of Washington, the calculations of the party elites and the demands of the special interests. That’s the aspect of the Kennedy formula that remains potent. Pete Buttigieg has followed a clear Kennedy path: attending Harvard, studying in England, serving in the military, and preaching generational change and “a fresh start.” Meanwhile, he has a natural means of erasing the predatory womanizing from the JFK image: He’s gay. His extroverted husband, ubiquitous on social media, provides both the reassurance of domestic tranquility and a reminder that the Buttigieg candidacy is groundbreaking in more than just his audacity in running for the White House while serving as a small-city mayor. His fearless pursuit of the nomination, while eschewing the usual credentialing process, marks him as a man apart, too. Democratic primary voters love to make a statement and voting for a gay man may feel more refreshing, and more like a symbolic repudiation of Donald Trump, than opting for a more conventional Kennedy stand-in.

The other Democrats are, more or less explicitly, repudiating the Kennedy style. . . . And yet if JFK’s mannerisms are subtracted from the equation, there’s no reason that a politically appealing, slightly elusive, outsider woman couldn’t replicate some of his mystique. The enduring takeaway of the past half century is not that the candidates who looked and acted the most like JFK were successful. It is rather that those who embodied his spirit of generational change, inspiring rhetoric and arms-length distance from the party establishment have prevailed, while those lacking such attributes failed.

Their [JFK and RFK] appeal to the majority rested on their sense of promise. Tomorrow belongs to the young, the vigorous, the idealistic—a notion that might register especially powerfully when running against a 74-year-old Donald Trump.

Now, as ever, the Kennedy imprisonment is regarded by the left as an electronic dog fence—one that traps the Democrats into relying too much on compromise to achieve victory, and an over-reliance on personal charisma over party organization. Still, it’s a lot better than losing, and at its best can feel so dazzling that the boundaries of the possible seem to fade away. For the Democrats of today, as much as in 1960 or 1980, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

In my view, the piece is onto something - even if Sanders cultists are blind to it. The NBC News piece adds further credence to the need for a younger more youthful candidate.  Here are highlights:

It was, in some ways, an incongruous scene: Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old Democratic presidential hopeful running on a message of generational change, addressing a crowd that was overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly white-haired.

But if Buttigieg’s two-day campaign swing through the first in the nation primary state is any indication, many Democratic activists are drawn to the South Bend, Indiana, mayor’s message and don’t see his age as a liability.  Indeed, many view it as an asset.

Manchester, New Hampshire, resident Mary Woods added, “I don’t think age means you have wisdom or integrity. Look and what we’re facing in Washington now.”

Among more than a dozen Democrats eyeing the party’s presidential nomination, Buttigieg in recent weeks has broken through as a candidate on the rise: a Harvard educated Rhodes Scholar, military veteran, openly gay and by far the youngest in a highly diverse field.

Buttigieg’s pitch, which he calls “intergenerational,” warns of a future in crisis if certain issues aren’t addressed, notably cybersecurity and climate change.

In the 2016 New Hampshire primary, Democrats overwhelmingly favored Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders who, at 77, is seeking the nomination again this time.

But many said they worried both men [Sanders and Biden] represented the past and that they were eyeing a younger candidate to take on the 72-year-old President Donald Trump.

“I was a big Bernie guy last time around, and Bernie should get a lot of kudos since he laid the platform for what the Democrats are talking about today,” Nashua resident Bruce Nest said. “But this guy, Pete, brings it to a whole other level. Bernie is like high school, Pete is like college.”

Manchester resident Anne McDonough put it more bluntly: “I think Bernie’s time has passed. Also, Joe Biden’s time has passed.”