In Obama, many youth see their generation's JFK
9:03 PM
By Ed Tibbets, Quad-City Times | Posted: Saturday, November 22, 2008
These days, comparisons between President-elect Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy abound.
It’s almost impossible to see Obama, with his telegenic young family, preparing to make history and move into the White House, and not be reminded of the Kennedys.
However, some of the young Quad-Citians who have been roused to political and social activism by the new president-elect say, despite media comparisons — particularly as the country observed the 45th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination on Saturday — they’re not looking at the Obama presidency so much as a renewal of Camelot as they are a new beginning for their own generation.
Several area young people and college professors say there is probably only a passing familiarity with Kennedy among college-age kids.
“I suspect what they know is more of the mythology,” said Dave Redlawsk, a political science professor at the University of Iowa.
That might not be so unusual.
Many of the college-age set’s parents weren’t even old enough to remember Kennedy’s presidency, which began in 1961.
“My father was a child when he was in power,” says Lucie VanHecke, a 23-year-old Augustana College student.
A volunteer for Obama, VanHecke says that it was hard to miss the Kennedy comparisons for much of the campaign season.
They started early, and like now, many centered more on style than substance: the appeal Obama has with younger people, the oratorical gifts he and Kennedy shared and their common ability to leverage technology to political advantage.
For Obama, it’s the Internet. For Kennedy, it was television.
Still, it’s not as if that fueled a fascination with the earlier president among young people. “I won’t say I ran straight out and Googled him but I knew why they were making the comparisons,” VanHecke says.
“People my age just probably remember a few speeches and that he was tragically assassinated,” says Kevin Gluba, a 30-year-old from Davenport who worked for Obama in several states.
Gluba, the son of Davenport Mayor Bill Gluba, says he grew up hearing about the Kennedys via his activist father.
VanHecke says she has been learning about Kennedy, particularly as she prepares to spend a month studying abroad in Vietnam next year.
She says she’s learned of Kennedy’s escalation of the war there. And, she adds, she’s watched the 1960 presidential debate between Kennedy and Richard Nixon five times.
“He was a very captivating individual,” she says of Kennedy.
It’s that captivation, in fact, that Obama backers describe when they speak of their own feeling for the new president-elect.
“It was Senator Obama’s personality and the way I felt he was speaking to me and my generation that just had me engaged,” says Nick Colwell of Davenport, a 21-year-old senior at St. Ambrose University.
He, too, remembers Kennedy mostly through the eyes of his father, who was 13 at the time of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
“He sort of remembers that time and that everybody was kind of freaking out,” says Colwell.
There are varying levels of familiarity and interest in Kennedy among college students, professors say.
“I had a student yesterday who said she has a certain fascination with Kennedy and how she sees so many parallels,” says Chrisopher Witt, an assistant professor of political science at Augustana.
But he and Redlawsk add they haven’t seen a markedly greater interest in learning about the 35th president, even with the plentiful comparisons to Obama.
As the comparisons are made, though, there is some knowledge gained, Redlawsk says. “I suspect, to some degree, they’re absorbing it.”
Some young people — and even their parents — may also be absorbing lessons about Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, as news stories in recent weeks have drawn parallels between the incoming president and the 32nd and 16th presidents.
For Colwell, whatever the comparisons to Kennedy — or any other president — people of his generation aren’t so much interested in the past, as the here and now.
With wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan and an economy in crisis — not to mention the fiscal challenges of Social Security and Medicare that have the potential to land hardest on the young — there’s enough to think about with today’s problems.
“People my age are more interested in what’s happening now,” Colwell says. “Our parents have Kennedy. We have Obama.”
It’s almost impossible to see Obama, with his telegenic young family, preparing to make history and move into the White House, and not be reminded of the Kennedys.
However, some of the young Quad-Citians who have been roused to political and social activism by the new president-elect say, despite media comparisons — particularly as the country observed the 45th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination on Saturday — they’re not looking at the Obama presidency so much as a renewal of Camelot as they are a new beginning for their own generation.
Several area young people and college professors say there is probably only a passing familiarity with Kennedy among college-age kids.
“I suspect what they know is more of the mythology,” said Dave Redlawsk, a political science professor at the University of Iowa.
That might not be so unusual.
Many of the college-age set’s parents weren’t even old enough to remember Kennedy’s presidency, which began in 1961.
“My father was a child when he was in power,” says Lucie VanHecke, a 23-year-old Augustana College student.
A volunteer for Obama, VanHecke says that it was hard to miss the Kennedy comparisons for much of the campaign season.
They started early, and like now, many centered more on style than substance: the appeal Obama has with younger people, the oratorical gifts he and Kennedy shared and their common ability to leverage technology to political advantage.
For Obama, it’s the Internet. For Kennedy, it was television.
Still, it’s not as if that fueled a fascination with the earlier president among young people. “I won’t say I ran straight out and Googled him but I knew why they were making the comparisons,” VanHecke says.
“People my age just probably remember a few speeches and that he was tragically assassinated,” says Kevin Gluba, a 30-year-old from Davenport who worked for Obama in several states.
Gluba, the son of Davenport Mayor Bill Gluba, says he grew up hearing about the Kennedys via his activist father.
VanHecke says she has been learning about Kennedy, particularly as she prepares to spend a month studying abroad in Vietnam next year.
She says she’s learned of Kennedy’s escalation of the war there. And, she adds, she’s watched the 1960 presidential debate between Kennedy and Richard Nixon five times.
“He was a very captivating individual,” she says of Kennedy.
It’s that captivation, in fact, that Obama backers describe when they speak of their own feeling for the new president-elect.
“It was Senator Obama’s personality and the way I felt he was speaking to me and my generation that just had me engaged,” says Nick Colwell of Davenport, a 21-year-old senior at St. Ambrose University.
He, too, remembers Kennedy mostly through the eyes of his father, who was 13 at the time of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
“He sort of remembers that time and that everybody was kind of freaking out,” says Colwell.
There are varying levels of familiarity and interest in Kennedy among college students, professors say.
“I had a student yesterday who said she has a certain fascination with Kennedy and how she sees so many parallels,” says Chrisopher Witt, an assistant professor of political science at Augustana.
But he and Redlawsk add they haven’t seen a markedly greater interest in learning about the 35th president, even with the plentiful comparisons to Obama.
As the comparisons are made, though, there is some knowledge gained, Redlawsk says. “I suspect, to some degree, they’re absorbing it.”
Some young people — and even their parents — may also be absorbing lessons about Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, as news stories in recent weeks have drawn parallels between the incoming president and the 32nd and 16th presidents.
For Colwell, whatever the comparisons to Kennedy — or any other president — people of his generation aren’t so much interested in the past, as the here and now.
With wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan and an economy in crisis — not to mention the fiscal challenges of Social Security and Medicare that have the potential to land hardest on the young — there’s enough to think about with today’s problems.
“People my age are more interested in what’s happening now,” Colwell says. “Our parents have Kennedy. We have Obama.”
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