Obama is Not JFK – So please, enough with the comparison!

They aren’t really that similar – I’d say he’s more like LBJ. Just because he has similar rhetoric, is young (Kennedy was three years younger), has a photogenic wife and kids, and was discounted because of age like JFK doesn’t mean he was similar. These are all superficial reasons to say that they are similar in any substantive sense.

Certainly, in terms of personal history, they’re entirely different; JFK was far more of a statesman by the time he took office having traveled the world extensively, served much longer in Congress, and experienced more as a result of his father’s ambassadorship to the UK in 1938.

Obama’s presidency is not like JFK’s at all. Obama has inherited war like LBJ did, is obsessed with domestic projects like LBJ was, has continued the foreign policy of his predecessor like LBJ (if you disagree look up U.S. troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan), and has kept his predecessor’s foreign policy advisers (Robert Gates) the way LBJ did.

Get over this nostalgia; it’s superficial, inaccurate, and frankly annoying for anyone who actually knows anything the presidencies and personal histories of Presidents Obama and Kennedy.