Obama and his predecessors

The Democratic Party Convention in Denver, where Barack Obama makes his keynote speech today, has worked hard to spin the event as a passing on of the torch: from the Kennedy family to Mr Obama. How much does this link truly define the as-yet-undefined Mr Obama?

There is, first, Bill Clinton. Even if both men might resent the comparison, the strong sense of high political ambition and self-belief in both of them is striking. Mr Clinton, a Rhodes scholar and law graduate of Yale, never considered a lucrative career in law.

Mr Obama, a graduate of Harvard law school, was such a sharp student editor of the Harvard Law Review that he was offered a job at the University of Chicago on the basis of his editorial suggestions to one influential conservative scholar, Michael W. McConnell.

But he turned down offers of a lucrative full-time position at Chicago, even when, in 2000, his political career seemed over, as did a conventional law practice. And he never published anything of his own (even though he had clearly drafted his own textbook for his classes).

It is evident to his former colleagues that he did not want his opinions to come back to haunt him politically. And he followed the same policy on several issues in the Senate. Some mentors there explicitly told him that his lack of "baggage" could prove to be advantageous for a presidential run.

In the light of some fans' fears that Mr Obama might prove too idealistic for office, this background is worth keeping in mind. When he made the promise of an early pull-out from Iraq, he knew he would have to modify it later, as he did. When he spoke of an "undivided Jerusalem", to placate the Jewish vote in the US, he knew he would later have to say he meant "undivided by barbed wire", to placate the Arab vote.

Mr Obama is a deliberate political operator, at the head of a political machine as formidable as that of the Clintons. The idealist orator of the primaries was at once someone very familiar with the law of campaign finance and district boundaries - he had taught innovative courses in both at Chicago.

The similarity to JFK is threefold. First, both men rely on advisors brought in from academe. JFK brought them in after he won office. Mr Obama has economists as important members of his team, and seems genuinely interested in what the latest research in economic behaviour and education says.

More importantly, both men have fundamentally changed the nature of presidential campaigning: JFK by cementing the power of TV; Mr Obama, the power of ICT. The Obama machine uses dissemination of news by mobile phone and e-mail to gather data on its potential supporters. Its detailed knowledge on voters is said to be unprecedented: Obama campaigners know when each likely supporter opens his or her e-mail, and time their request for campaign donations accordingly.

But Mr Obama has used ICT as more than a machine. Like no other politician, he has realised how the medium changes political rhetoric. His message of change may not be believed in by blue-collar workers accustomed to achieving change through hierarchical institutions like unions; but it is the kind of change that the networking, Facebook generation does believe in.

Hence the third similarity to JFK, which is perhaps the most obvious: the fact that both men came to represent future-oriented politics. It is this communicative power, which JFK's daughter has commented on, that is the most striking resemblance.

But the differences are also striking. JFK, despite his reputation, was not an intellectual. Arguably his biggest contribution to culture was saying he was reading James Bond - sending the ailing sales of Casino Royale through the roof.

We may need to go back to the two Roosevelt Presidents to find a candidate who has studied politics and history so closely. Theodore Roosevelt had in-depth knowledge of naval history, which informed his conduct of foreign affairs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was less of a reader, but seven years of recuperating from polio in the 1920s left him with time to clarify his political vision and rebuild what seemed like a broken career.

With Obama, we find that the main themes of his campaign - despite the submerged policy detail - have been mulled over for years. At Chicago he taught courses on equal opportunities and campaign finance, venturing beyond the law into interpretative history and politics. His economic policies have been influenced by his time at Chicago, too.

His economic plan would give back some $1,400 in taxes to middle and working class families. We will need to see whether this long reflection spells itself out in a new New Deal for the 21st century. Before that he needs to be elected.

ranierfsadni@europe.com