The Next JFK
19th January 2017
Obama’s enduring legacy will be as a cultural symbol, the first African-American president who represented a current of social change in the country and reflected the values and attitudes of the progressive elite.
He will be remembered—and revered—by his admirers as his generation’s JFK. Lasting substantive achievements are besides the point when ascending to this iconic status. As Ross Douthat of the New York Times points out, Kennedy brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, and it was hardly a speed bump in the creation of the image of Camelot.
The standards here are largely stylistic. And Obama checks nearly every box: He was a young president; a photogenic man with a good-looking family; a symbol of generational change; an orator given to flights of inspiring rhetoric; if not a wit exactly, a facile talker with a taste for mocking the other side.
The process is a little like Romans deciding which emperors to make gods after their deaths, depending on their reputations. For Democrats, LBJ and Jimmy Carter were too unglamorous and too obviously failures, whereas Bill Clinton gave too much ground to Republicans (besides failing to keep his dalliances discreet). Obama won two terms, is as ideologically pure as reasonably possible, and has cultural staying power.