KENNEDY AND OBAMA.

George Packer correctly calls for an end to the comparisons, not on grounds that they give Obama too much credit, but because they give him too little:

J.F.K. was a mediocre President. For two and a half years his position on civil rights was legalistic—he stood up for enforcing court orders—until the dramatic images from Birmingham in May 1963 forced him to describe the issue as a moral one. The civil-rights bill he then introduced into Congress stood little chance of passing partly because Kennedy was unwilling to spend the huge amount of necessary political capital. For those who believe he was on his way out of Vietnam when he was assassinated, how to explain the dramatic coup three weeks before his death that overthrew the government of Ngo Dinh Diem and pulled the U.S. ever deeper into the quagmire? Kennedy’s main domestic accomplishment was a tax cut; his main foreign accomplishment was avoiding nuclear war over Soviet missiles in Cuba (his finest hour).Kennedy was a supremely cool calculator of interest. Ironic detachment was his strength, and his weakness. It made him less likely than L.B.J. to have invested his ego and half a million troops in a hopeless war. It also meant that he wouldn’t have staked his political future on passing civil-rights and voting rights—victories that Johnson correctly predicted would cost the Democrats the South for a generation.

It's worth remembering, too, that people weren't confused about Kennedy at the time. He barely squeaked by Richard Nixon, and even then, probably only through buying votes in West Virginia and Illinois. He wasn't anything like a lock for reelection. In death, he became the vessel for many broken dreams, and was retroactively absolved of many of his worst sins and misjudgments, and that's all for the good, I guess. The world needs heroes, and there's little wrong with fake ones. But since lots of folks gush over echoes of Kennedy's comportment in Obama, it's worth remembering that the constellation of qualities Kennedy possessed did not result in a well-run or memorable presidency. People may sense something iconic in Obama, which is why they compare him to Kennedy, but he actually has the chance to be a much better president.