Barack Obama and the tricky mantle of JFK 
At the end he is standing hand aloft, shot from behind in front of an estimated 200,000 cheering, swaying, flag shaking, near-evangelists. Earlier, the reverse camera angle has him at the base of the colossal Siegessäule or ‘Victory Column’, the sun emblazoning the gilded winged Goddess that has descended squarely upon its pinnacle. Behind the column stands the former East Berlin Television Tower, in its day a defiant gesture of communist atheist modernism; an improbable olive on a giant stick. An iconic building upon which the very same sun in an earlier incarnation was noted, with huge satisfaction in the west, as forming on its mirrored surface a perfect cross of light. From whichever way it was viewed it appeared to many to etch the hope of Christ on this very communist statement of intent. And hope was the key message that was on display as Barack Obama addressed his audience in Berlin (yesterday at the time of writing this article).
His speech of course was not just about hope and aspiration – although there was plenty of that. It mined other themes too. John F Kennedy had addressed this city in June 1963 in the wake of the construction of the wall that had so brutally divided it a couple of years before. There were references to that and also to Berlin’s special place ‘in the front line’ as Kennedy had put it. There were evocative throwbacks to the 1948 airlift with all its connotations of defiant siege and endurance. For Obama as a ‘mere’ (and I use that word relatively) ‘candidate’ for the world’s most powerful office to evoke JFK (however subliminally) was something that many would have been wary to attempt. The assumption (however lightly) of the mantle of illustrious forebears is best left to others to suggest rather than for a person to claim for himself. Witness the stinging putdown of ‘Blooper-Meister’ and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Dan Quale in the 1988 presidential elections when his Democrat opposite number Lloyd Benson, referring to Quale’s reference to having served as much time in Congress as JFK prior to Kennedy’s race for the Presidency, memorably intoned (and it is worth setting the exchange out in full), “Senator I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator you’re no Jack Kennedy.” Quale’s wounded reply, “that was really uncalled for Senator,” is one of the most pitiful debating responses I have ever heard.
The two speeches naturally contain different content. JFK focusing predominantly on the acute threat of the cold war with its nuclear backdrop and with Berlin as the vital metaphorical crossroads between the Free World and Soviet tyranny. Obama acknowledges this noble past but points to more modern content. The challenges of terror, Iraq (we owe the Iraqis a withdrawal that sees them secure), Afghanistan (the war we must win and with Europe more engaged), world poverty and climate change (America going up a gear). But the overall prescription is the same; the USA and Europe must stand together if world challenges are to be addressed. An internationalist message at its very core and one that we should welcome.
But let’s get back to JFK. Obama might get a bit of political stick back home for playing away (American voters seldom reward those of their politicians who are popular overseas but might be suspected of taking their eye off domestic issues). He might take a few hits for what his opponents may seek to present as premature triumphalism. But the JFK dimension? Well, he is unlikely to be visited with the Dan Quale treatment anytime soon. The reason for this lies within his first words as he took the platform. He had, Obama said, not come to Berlin as a candidate, he had come as a ‘fellow citizen of the world’. And, as he pressed on to remind us, not just as any old world citizen. He is a black world citizen. He is quite explicit. “I know that I don’t look like the Americans who have previously spoken in this great city.” His lineage includes a father who grew up “herding goats in Kenya” (cue an inspired African-sounding whistle from the crowd). His grandfather had been a black domestic servant. So his journey to the base of the Siegessäule that day was, as he put it, “improbable” – yet here he stood, a man on the threshold of perhaps becoming the first black President of the United States. An achievement against the odds and of as great a moment as that 35 years earlier when Jack Kennedy had stood just half a mile away and announced “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
Obama did not need, nor would he have wanted, to conjure up the rest of his broader lineage. That part is already deeply understood in America (where being a black candidate still has great challenges). But there would have been plenty to have played with had he chosen to do so. He could have abhored the fact that as many as 12 million Africans were caught up in the transatlantic slave trade. Pointed out that almost a hundred years after the American Civil War many blacks were still denied the vote through the selective use of poll tax and literacy qualifications in the southern states. He could have marvelled at Rosa Parks the black woman who in 1955 refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery Alabama Bus and so challenged that State’s segregation laws and helped start the civil rights movement championed by Martin Luther King and others. In one of the most powerful quotes, for its simplicity and dignified humanity Rosa Park’s is hard to beat. She said at the time of her arrest, “when the policeman bent down to ask, ‘Auntie, are you going to move’ all the strength of all the people through all those years joined in me. I said, ‘no.’”
Obama would not want anyone to vote for him simply because of the colour of his skin. But equally, if in January when the newly sworn-in 44th President of the United States walks the long corridors of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and in to the Oval Office his steps echo to those of Rosa Parks, Reverend King and yes even perhaps JFK, then something will have been achieved that will be hard to overestimate. Don’t make too much of who you are Obama - but keep going.