Barack and Bobby: Compare and Contrast; and, Obama-Clinton as Lennon-McCartney circa 1970
It was moving to read Tom Hayden's reflections on Bobby Kennedy's candidacy of 1968, his own role in it, and the ways in which Obama's campaign has reconnected him with the spirit of those times. Yet I find it equally moving to consider the ways in which Obama and RFK are different, the ways in which they are mirror images rather than carbon copies.
My own relationship to Bobby's campaign was not like Tom Hayden's. I was 14 years old, obsessed by politics and rock & roll. And if you're going to be a 14-year-old who's obsessed with politics and rock & roll, 1968 was the year to do it: Student revolts in Paris and Prague. Marching in the streets of America. Gene McCarthy's candidacy, then Bobby's. And musically there were the Beatles, the Stones, James Brown, the Doors, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, the Impressions, Paul Butterfield, Albert King, the Who, Aretha Franklin,Cream, Marvin Gaye, the Mothers ...
Then, tragically, gun shots in Memphis and L.A. Drug overdoses in rock star hotel rooms. But before the tragedies there were the moments of exhilaration.
I've said this before: Had Bobby Kennedy not run for President, I wouldn't be writing these words right now. My fascination with politics is the direct result of what he made seem possible, from the symbolic to the soulful -- from his promise to make "This Land Is Your Land" the national anthem, to his tears for the Appalachian poor. I see Barack Obama having the same impact on young kids today. It's the single most positive effect his candidacy could possibly have.
And yet, for the many similarities between the two candidates, consider the differences: Bobby Kennedy was the ultimate insider, the product of wealth and power. As he grew his hair and increasingly identified with the youth of the world, as he joined Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King to walk with the disaffected, as he challenged the world of authority that his family had mastered, he was doing something powerful and symbolic: He was walking down from the mountaintop to join with the people below.
Obama's is doing the opposite: He's climbing up the mountain. Where RFK was the ultimate insider, he's the ultimate outsider. He's African American, multiracial, international, from a non-traditional family upbringing. Bobby's bearing in his final year was increasingly open, informal, and emotional, which Barack's is centered, balanced, and almost cerebral. In Marshall McLuhan terms, Barack is "cool" while Bobby was "hot." And where Bobby joined a movement that was already underway, Barack seems to have triggered one that was waiting to happen.
Yet both of them are catalysts, and both created candidacies with enormous potential to generate symbolic and real change. Obama's first move as party head was to refuse PAC and Federal lobbyist money for the DNC. That may be largely symbolic in hard-dollar terms, but as a sign of the times it's enormous. Combined with his stunning ability to raise money from small-dollar donors, it's nothing less than a declaration of revolution. He's seizing the means of political production and transferring it from insiders to the general public.
I read every word that Tom Hayden wrote in 1968, too. He's right to note that Obama's policies as President might be disappointing, although like him I'm hopeful. And an Obama presidency will certainly be an enormous change from the last eight years, no matter what happens. That, plus the electrifying effect he's having on young people, makes 2008 a year of great promise.
As for that "secret meeting" between Clinton and Obama last night, it made me think of Lennon and McCartney during the breakup of the Beatles in 1970. The two of them were pretty pissed off at one another by then, and Lennon loyalists felt that McCartney screwed him with the way he handled his departure from the group. But there were only four living people who knew what it was like to be a Beatle, to have lived in the eye of that hurricane. And only two of them knew what it was like to spend years fighting for the role of frontman and band leader.
People put a lot of pressure on them to put the band back together after that. In some ways, maybe they should have. Maybe then we wouldn't have had Lennon's "Mind Games" ("some kinda druid dude lifting the veil") or Paul singing "we're so sorry, Uncle Albert." Each was always the other's best critic. But then again, we might not have had "Imagine," either.
Apparently Lennon and McCartney repaired their friendship, and almost showed up on a whim to play on Saturday Night Live after a great routine in which Lorne Michaels and Jimmy Carter offered the Beatles $3500 to reunite. (Lennon said later that they didn't have time to make it to the studio where the show was being broadcast.)
My point? I guess it's this: A lot of people want a Dream Ticket, the same way a lot of people wanted a Beatles reunion. Me, I don't have an opinion either way. Management consultants talk about "managing up" and "delegating up" in business, and I intend to do that here. Barack is the party's leader now, and Hillary has created a powerful following. Let them work it out between themselves, and then let the candidate make his decision.
You can be a fan of Lennon's politics, his great writing and singing, and still acknowledge that McCartney is one of the great composers, musicians, and singers of our time. Obama and Clinton are like John and Paul in at least one way: Only the two of them know what it's been like to be in the bubble of this campaign for the last six months. If they want to go back on the road together, that's fine with me. If not, they'll each have their own hits.
Like the song says: They can work it out.
RJ Eskow blogs:
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The Sentinel Effect: Healthcare Blog
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Well, it's an interesting idea, but the hole in the analogy is that Obama and Clinton never had any sort of partnership, political or otherwise.
Well really they are in partnership for advancing the platform of the Democratic Party.
I have a dream also: a dream that I am sure will be deferred again and again. The dream is that we select our president the same way we select our accountant, our lawyer and our doctor. By their ability to do the job we want and need to be done. In my dream we do not transfer our lost illusions, failed hopes and dashed idealism onto a politican and lift that politican up to the level of a Savior, or a Phophet. I dream that all of us old 60's types quit reliving the "Glory Days", and boomer nostalgia goes the way of the hula hoop. I dream that we quit shoving our hopes onto the "youth" and require that they do not make "our" mistakes, but transend our failures. I dream that we grow up and quit fighting and solve problems. And do not engage in the kind of overblown hero worshiping that I see in Mr Obama's supporters. He might get elected and he might be a good, even a great president but lets not get so emotionally overrought that he make him into a Abe Lincoln of Illinois. That is for history to do. Let him be a man and a politican, not a Kennedy. Camelot is over, let it die. Do not set the bar so high that if he does not walk on water, solve global warming and heal the sick he is a failure.
still a lot of hula hoops in my neighborhood :)
Wow! Is there such a thing as blue-sky pragmatism??
Hero Worshiping? I beg to differ. That comment insinuates that Senator Obama has a bunch of starry-eyed children worshiping his every move. It's a mistake to make a sweeping generalization like that.
I'm female, 47, white, single, a mother, an ex-wife, many many hats. Starry eyed worshiper is NOT one of my hats. Obama will probably be a great President.
How about we concentrate on helping HRCs supporters come down from out of the clouds. That might be more appropriate given the present set of circumstances.
"Do not set the bar so high that if he does not walk on water, solve global warming and heal the sick he is a failure."
Yes, exactly the opposite of what was done for the current occupant of the oval office.
Expectations for Shrub were set so low that when he proved able to walk a straight line and speak an almost intelligible form of English he was judged to be competent for the highest office in the land.... God this past eight plus years has been so bizarre!
Lovely post, RJ...
Barac-k evokes the same kinds of feelings I had for Bobby. Change is the key here. Refreshing is the word I'd use. We have great opportunity here to be a better country with more energy and compassion than has been seen for a very long time.
The references to Lennon-McCartney spoke to me and you made your point well.
We are close in age, RJE, and the impacts of 1968 remain with me to this day. I often remember Bobby and his impacts. He was no god but he evolved and he changed and he came to understand.
That is part of our job here. We are all works in progress. I look forward to the next four years with BO in the WH and us engaged once again in our own fates.
Bobby Kennedy espoused the same "change" sentiment that is the theme in the Obama campaign, meaning a real fundimental change in substance. I was one of the younger generation at that time who were very excited about the prospect of a RFK presidency that promised to end the war in vietnam, end poverty and put the country back on the right track. I had voted for Bobby in the California Democratic primary on the same day that he was assassinated and was devasted by what I witnessed on live TV that evening. I felt a very personal loss as one would witnessing the murder of a close friend.
The polls showed that in a matchup between him and Nixon he was greatly favored to win. How different the course of history would have been had Bobby not been assassinated.
I think when Bobby was running, and I was a young adult who witnessed the shooting while watching it on TV from my Kansas home and there were differences. Even though many of us were very pro RFK, few had any forboding feeling that if he didn't get the nomination there would be riots in the street and another burning down of America as had happened after MLK two months before. On the other hand, from the fervency of this current campaign there are many people who in discussions have said "If Obama does not get the nomination, Chicago 1968 will be calm by comparison" including Black former Governor Wilder of VA and many were concerned about the possiblity of more riots like Watts and Detroit. For those of you too young to remember, fires broke out all over the country the night MLK was shot and had at other times when injustices against blacks became too overwhelming for that part of the population to take. I would say with say with over 90% voting rates from that community, Hades fires would probably have occurred had he been denied and many in the older generations who lived through them have had that in the back of their minds. I only hope that in the national election cooler heads prevail no matter what the final outcome of the election. Obama cannot even stop the vitriol in his supporters on the internet,. why do we think he could stop worse?
Chill out. Lots of people say lots of things, but we're living in different times. I was there too.
Why can't a visionary, as Obama, also be pragmatic ? Clinton also displayed a vision!
Aren't most of us a combination of both?
Obama is visionary with strong leadership qualities- he acts with thought and intelligence.
He is one of a kind!
Clinton is one of kind
Obama is extremely pragmatic.
have we already forgotten how his people outsmarted and out spent an odds on favorite? the heavy hitter in the race?
Brains and smart tactics won this race and they will win the GE, if we can stay attuned to our higher selves and not let our egos take over and sow dissension.
The Barack and Hillary meeting last night was on the ominous day of Bobby Kennedy's assassination by a fanatical Palestinian gunman. LIke RFK Obama and Clinton are anti-war candidates. LIke RFK they are U.S. senators. Like RFK Hillary is a senator from New York and related to a former president. RFK was murdered by Sirhan Sirhan who was born in 1944-the 44th year of the 20th century the number of the next president.
Hillary was born in Chicago, Obama has his home there. RFK's campaign stop after the California primaries was to be Chicago the site of the disastrous Democratic Convention and anti-war riots.
In 1968 Mitt Romney's father George ran in the Republican presidential primaries and lost to Richard Nixon, like Mitt lost to John McCain.
If Bobby Kennedy had lived he would have beat Nixon and become president. If Hillary had beat Obama in the primaries she would have went on to defeat McCain in the fall as she is clearly more electable. Her loss to Obama prefigures his defeat as RFK's assassination prefigured the defeat of Hubert Humphrey 40 years ago.
It is interesting to note that Obama gave his victory speech at the Xcel Center in Minneapolis, the home of Hubert Humphrey when he ran for president.
By the way, Sirhan Sirhan celebrated his 59th birthday on March 19, 2003, the day Operation Iraqi Freedom began. Iraq and the crisis in the Middle East will prove ruinous to Obama's SURRENDER EXPRESS.
Ick.
Take that tinfoil hat off ok?
I can't hear you with all the conspiracy interference going on.
Jeez, Apollo, how many blog responses have you posted this same conspiratorial nonsense to?
Hillary on the Ticket would prevent the Republicans from
eviscerating and castrating Obama like they've done to
everyone from Kerry to Dukakis.
You can say a lot about her
but she is no soft wimp.
:)
Neither is O. Now that Hillary's out you'll see how tough he is.
Obama is one of a kind- comparing him with others does not work.
These men come from very different places- environment, experiences and maybe, motivate for different reasons.
Barack Hussin Obama is a unique candidate. This must be said.
Tom Hayden may not care to remember that Bobby Kennedy had worked for Sen Joe McCarthy &, as Jack Kennedy's Attn'y Gen, hounded the late Jimmy Hoffa & the Teamsters relentlessly.
Some of us were young voters then from the working class. Bobby was a de facto member of the Irish Catholic elite of Ma. Jack gave Bobby a possibly undue break in making Bobby his AG. Bobby's work with Joe McCarthy tainted him for old time liberals. Some of us didn't trust Bobby as AG for JFK & LBJ or as a Senator from NY. The Bobby Kennedy who was murdered in LA may have been a changed, more liberal, anti 'Nam man but some of us had our doubts about Bobby.
Look at BHO, he's a progressive, a man who earned his education by the scholarship route, the editor of a law review, a community worker for the poor, served in the Il legislature, learned Cook Co, Il Democratic politics. Obama is untainted by serving a reactionary like McCarthy or a vendatta with Jimmy Hoffa.
Don't compare BHO with Bobby Kennedy. BHO is a unique man with no ties to the past. The SDS types fail to remember that Bobby Kennedy was tainted by his past.
Or maybe some of understand that people are capable of changing and growing and that failing to forgive them and move on limits us all as humans and alienates potential allies.
not smart. We need all our allies now, and we need to be united.
Thanks for the nice bit of real history. Would a comparison between BO and Eugene McCarthy then be more apt?
If Clinton and Obama had spent a decade giving the world a New Deal II, and then had this presidential falling out, MAYBE you'd have a point.
If you have to pick on the Beatles, I'd say it's closer to Ringo vs. Pete Best, at the time _before_ the Beatles changed music.
Bobby Kennedy's mission was to relieve poverty. That was his focus and for that he was beloved. He was a voice for the forgotten. Obama's movement of young professionals do not show the same concern for this demographic. It is Hillary Clinton's message that perpetuates the vision of RFK, as was evident by the support she received from his children.
I think an Obama/Hillary Ticket would be unstoppable.
unstoppably insane. BIG mistake.
True!
And because it is actually the Clintons who have not been vetted. Sure, they took a lot of heat and hard right crap in the nineties but what's happened since 2000 as not even begun to come to light. I would bet the Vanity Fair article was only the tip of the iceberg. Just there, there is certainly enough innuendo to raise issues for months.
There have been ample opportunities for the ex-pres to succumb to his lifelong weakness and they've also refused to open the contribution records of the Presidential Library. HRC also as many fruitful areas that haven't been closely examined, including fund raising 'irregularities' and the pending court issue.
She will not be the VP candidate because I doubt the Clintons would be willing to submit to the vetting process that has been set up by the Obama team. Even if they were, I doubt that BHO would find the appeal of the 'dream team' to be worth of the potential distraction these things could bring to the general election campaign.
I'd bet the VP choice won't be finalized for a good long while, perhaps not even until the convention. By then most of the Hillary fans will have time to cool and take a pragmatic look at the available choices facing them in November.
I too remember 1968 well and Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign was not as unselfish and idealistic as the myth that outlived him. It was Eugene McCarthy who had the lone vision to challenge a sitting President Johnson over an unjust war in Vietnam. After McCarthy almost defeated Johnson in New Hampshire which was perceived as a huge surprise, only then did Kennedy throw his hat in the ring in mid-March to exploit and take over the movement that McCarthy had assembled. Despite Kennedy's huge name recognition, media support, and money, McCarthy then won primaries in Oregon and Wisconsin (there were only a few state primaries in that era). The California primary was the only one that Kennedy won. He had a ruthless reputation before the 1968 race, but that changed with his martyrdom. Kennedy rose to fame on his brother's coattails and his father's money - basically the same kind of nepotism that gave Hillary and Dubya their careers. It's hard to say whether the image that persists today about him would have fit the man if he had not been tragically shot down, but it certainly didn't apply to who he had been up till that point.
I do recall he had a rep as an opportunist, but think that is a lot of sour grapes from that time; maybe it's time for it to go away now.
I let it go in 1968. I just wanted to present some information that would balance the legend of RFK. Sadly, none of us are saints, even the saints.
It's hard to say whether the image that persists today about him (RFK) would have fit the man if he had not been tragically shot down, but it certainly didn't apply to who he had been up till that point.
__________
Good point, but people do change radically (the legend of Saul on the road to Damascus), and there is simply no way of knowing how much of Bobby's "conversion" was genuine. The real tragedy is that American history between 1968 and 2008 may have played out far differently and we will never know it.
John Pilger, who travelled with the RFK campaign, has a comparison of Obama and Kennedy:
http://www
Time to take off the rose-colored glasses.
Thanks for the link, Wozzeck!
I gave up on Fabianism/ New Statesman in the 90's when it became Tony Blair's mouthpiece, but John Pilger's writings always challenge & these are issues I contemplate. I campaigned for both Clinton/ Obama. The distinction in their differences on policies is, indeed, insignificant. Pilger's noting of the corporate/lobbyist campaign funding/ support of Obama is equal to Clinton's, as well.
Like RFK's campaign which I knew well, having also been at the Ambassador that fateful night, it is an emotional passion vested in both Clinton/Ob
From one comment:
"Presidents don't really represent the people who vote for them, they actually represent the people in the elite who identify them, choose them and pay for their campaigns. Crudely, those who pay the piper..."
Barack Obama may be celebrated/ elected as an agent of change, but in our "corporato
WillfromSF- I don't know how old you were in 1968 but you are spouting the same propaganda that the mainstream media spouted then. In 1968 the media were also controlled by people who enjoyed the way things operated and did not want any changes made to the status quo. Eugene McCarthy was a true elitist who only new the suffering most people live through from a poem he once read. McCarthy had absolutely nothing to lose by running as very few Americans had ever heard of him before.
If you believe RFK was an opportunist then he must have been the stupidest man who ever lived. There is not much political benefit to being the spokesman for the poor and disadvantaged or to oppose the war starting in 1966.
Try again.
thanks. good perspective from someone old enough to know what was going on.
I was just a kid - 15- at the time.
Elderly: You evidently have no knowledege of the anti- Vietnam war effort and Gene McCarthy's role in it. RFK only ran for president after McCarthy led the way.
As John Pilger notes:
"In 1968, Robert Kennedy sought to rescue the party and his own ambitions from the threat of real change that came from an alliance of the civil rights campaign and the anti-war movement then commanding the streets of the main cities, and which Martin Luther King had drawn together until he was assassinated in April that year. Kennedy had supported the war in Vietnam and continued to support it in private, but this was skilfully suppressed as he competed against the maverick Eugene McCarthy, whose surprise win in the New Hampshire primary on an anti-war ticket had forced President Lyndon Johnson to abandon the idea of another term. Using the memory of his martyred brother, Kennedy assiduously exploited the electoral power of delusion among people hungry for politics that represented them, not the rich."
Lennon was a dreamer, McCartney was a pragmatist. Same can be said for Obama and Clinton respectively. Each needed the other. It has been said nothing ever got done if there was not some one around Lennon; on the other hand, McCartney would have continued to churn out more "Martha my Dears" if Lennon hadn't been around.
But there was another way in which Lennon and McCartney were different that Obama and Clinton are not. Lennon could shoot others down with a barb; he was the "rapier champion" of the Beatles, as Mac called him. On the other hand, McCartney was diplomatic and charming. I don't think either Obama or Clinton have Lennon's quick and devastating wit. The other three Beatles were reluctant to engage Lennon in a confrontation. I don't know, though, whether this would be something Barak could use.
I have a feeling we are going to see a lot more of that kind of wit, now that Hillary is out and he can really take off the gloves against McBush, which let's face it, is a pretty easy target!
Oh, no, no, no, no.! On the ticket, God forbid. Look at her true colors: HRC and her current ways, if not her past Centrism, Bill and her, yanking the Democrat Party to DLC Corporate Interest. Relinquishing democrat party ground consequent the threat the Rebel Republican Juggernaut of 1994 introduced. Set on dismantling the balance between Corporate Business and State business, eliminate as much of FDR's legacy as they could.
Could she be a moderate, even Centrist Republican in Democrat disguise? That sort of thing. All this and more disqualify her to ticket with a true democrat. Her past and current War hawkish ways, no apologies. On the contrary, obliterate IRAN if necessary, don't enhance OBAMA's case, his advance toward REAL CHANGE.REA
HILLARY's true colors creeped out incrementally, from underneath me, me ambiton and her old boy DC conditioning and 35 years of public service. How many of us waited for her sometime indication of Progressive Liberal, to manifest in big resolutions, Senate bill introductions and followup to pass. Maybe just maybe . . . who is she really? Her colors are what? Well, it ain't rainbow. Purple? She's divisive. It's her nature. Looking for trouble she finds it if not generates it. On OBAMA's ticket she would, while over and above her selfish, provide us with her impressive wonk, standup guts with anybody, undergird most democrat values fight, but bottom line, she is bought and sold old school.
can we please stop this now?
We won, ok?
Try and pause and take that in.
Its not the winning I mind, its the sore winning. The long winded jeremiads blaming the Clintons for all the evil in the world. Save your venom for the Right, they have done more to deserve it than Bill and Hillary.
That is the most incoherent post I have read so far by an Obama supporter. Congrats, quite an accomplishment.
Can't we all just get along?
Can't we all just get along?
__________
Given the fact that we are mostly Democrats, the answer is probably "no."
We are not all Democrats, but we are all Americans. However, those who are Democrats, we do need to stop fighting each other and Unite as One! I agree with the article when he writes that if Obama and Clinton is on the same ticket I will be okay, and if she is not, I will be okay too. I strongly believe that Hillary will not do anything if she is Veep to hurt Obama. This is no longer about our personal feelings, this is about our PARTY!
If we are to win in Nov. I pray that the Democrats will let the pass go, and look forward towards beating McCain in Nov. Let's show the world that we are adults and we will be able to Unite together. We have an election to win, and we would like to be under new management with Democrats in the White House.
"Yes We Can"
God Bless Us!
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