The Problem with Democratic Imperialists

The Guardian reminds us of the true legacy of JFK:

Kennedy... came to power with the complacent 1950's illusion that America's social and economic problems were largely solved. The only challenges lay abroad, with the threat of Soviet Communism and the danger that countries moving away from European colonial control would fail to "take off", as Kennedy's appalling academic guru Walt Rostow warned him. Kennedy won election largely on the basis of a fraud - the false charge of a "missile gap" which Eisenhower had allegedly permitted, leaving the USSR ahead of the US. Kennedy's inaugural was all about foreign affairs, and the only domestic reference (which was added at the last minute) was to say that America was committed to human rights "at home and around the world".

The black struggle for civil rights was already underway and the first Freedom Rides were to start four months after Kennedy became President, yet he seems to have been unaware of them. Later, when the movement became impossible to ignore, neither he nor his attorney-general brother Robert brought in significant reforms or legislation. They had the opportunity to appoint liberal federal judges, but failed. No wonder that the civil rights movement sang a sarcastic verse that went: There's a town in Mississippi called Liberty, there's a department in Washington called Justice.

...

Obama, we are told, has been re-reading books on Lincoln. I would recommend he goes through a forgotten book called The Kennedy Promise, by the British commentator (and one-time Observer reporter) Henry Fairlie. Published in 1973 with the sub-title "The politics of expectation", it is a brilliant demolition of the frenetic Kennedy governing mystique of crisis management and group-think. It points out that the constant talk of "challenges" and the need for US leadership tend to encourage confrontation and war.

That warning is apposite today. In his acceptance speech in Chicago Obama already told us "a new dawn of American leadership is at hand". Let us hope phrases of this kind do not appear in his inaugural address.