Democrats Draw Comparisons

JFK VS. LBJ

Democrats Draw Comparisons

AUSTIN -- When Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton met Thursday night to debate, they did so in an arena not far from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, the marble-sided structure that houses documents and memorabilia from the 36th president's tumultuous time in office.

In the Democratic presidential race, Obama has cast himself as a latter-day John F. Kennedy, summoning the energy and glamour of a new-generation politician. Clinton, for her part, has embraced the Johnson model -- an effective though not inspirational master of the system, perhaps resentful of her younger rival's rhetorical gifts.

The side-by-side comparisons of Obama and Clinton as Kennedy and Johnson are fascinating, if partly flawed. Certainly Obama embodies some of the Kennedy appeal, generating enthusiasm among young people the way JFK did in the early '60s.

Clinton has not run as Johnson, but more than once she has invoked his name as a counterpoint to the enthusiasm that surrounds Obama's candidacy. Last September, as she was attempting to draw a distinction between Obama's change-oriented message and her argument that experience matters, she cited LBJ as one example.

"From my time in the White House and in the Senate," she said, "I have learned that you bring change by working in the system established in our Constitution. You cannot pretend that the system doesn't exist."

She returned to Johnson around the time of the New Hampshire primary, as Obama was surging, to suggest that it took a skilled and experienced politician to fulfill the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. That statement blew up in Clinton's face, interpreted by some African Americans as an attempt to diminish either King or Obama or both, and she has generally avoided references to Johnson in that context since.

But even now, as she makes her stand in Johnson's home state of Texas and in Ohio, she is at least implicitly arguing that an understanding of the machinery of politics is critical to bringing policy changes to fruition.

Johnson still occupies an uneasy position within the Democratic Party and in the eyes of history. He is revered by many in the party for outlawing discrimination and creating the Medicare system. But he is still reviled by some for his prosecution of the Vietnam War, which tore the country apart during his final years in office.

As Johnson and Kennedy biographer Robert Dallek said Thursday morning, Iraq has reminded antiwar Democrats and others of Vietnam, to the detriment of Johnson's legacy. "Johnson is still dogged by the defeat in Vietnam and leading us into an unwinnable and unpopular war," he said. "The Democrats don't want to go there and embrace him."

But Dallek also noted that the very possibility that Obama could emerge as the Democratic presidential nominee would represent the fulfillment of all that Johnson did to advance the cause of civil rights and racial progress, despite the risk to his own party, in the '60s.

"In a sense, it's quite fitting that this debate between a woman and an African American should take place next to Lyndon Johnson's library," he said. "In that sense, he would be delighted."