Bigger Challenges Than Kennedy’s

Out of all the great speeches from American history, the most memorable to most Americans is certainly the one made to Congress by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. It doesn’t matter whether you watched it live or in its numerous repeats; it is one of those special moments that one inevitably learns about in primary school.

This speech was made when the young president challenged the United States to a project that sounded much too ambitious, if not unachievable: to send a man to walk on the Moon before the end of the decade.

One has to understand that America was then the champion of the free world and in a race to space against the communist USSR. America was, however, far behind. The Soviets had been the first to launch a satellite into orbit, Sputnik I, in 1957. Only two weeks after they had amazed the United States and the entire world with this exploit, they were launching Sputnik II, with the dog Laïka aboard.

Four months later, the first American rocket was used to place a satellite the size of a grapefruit in orbit, which lifted only four feet off the ground before crashing into pieces. The humiliation was complete and the fallout was threatening. The Russians were sending the entire world a powerful message: they were technically superior to the United States. Four years later, Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to travel into space. We know what happened after that - the United States’ scored a decisive victory eight years later when Neil Armstrong became the first man to put his feet on the lunar ground.

Barack Obama won’t send anyone to the Moon and doesn’t really seem interested in the adventure to the planet Mars that NASA is currently organizing. Honestly, if he ever dared to speak about such expenses with things as they are, Americans would certainly feel like committing him.

Nonetheless, the speech he made last week to Congress rivals and even goes beyond Kennedy’s in his ambition to take on the challenges one thinks as impossible to overcome.

Political analyst Daniel Gergen, who was the advisor to four presidents - three Republicans and a Democrat - used to say that Obama may not reach all of his goals, and if he ever manages to, then it will be “one of the most important political dramas of our time.” Gergen is highly renowned for the clarity of his judgement and for his neutrality.

Let’s think about it. First, President Obama doesn’t only want to put the economy back on its feet, he also wants to make up the United States’ huge deficit before the end of his first mandate. This doesn’t sound so daring, but the President also made the promise that every American would have health insurance. Moreover, he wants to double the $59 billion budget that is currently allocated to the educational sector by injecting $100 extra billion into it, $15 billion in the development of alternative energy sources in order to double the American energy production within the next three years, and increase the number of armed forces, while spending money to have a constant draft of 50,000 soldiers in Iraq and send at least 17,000 new ones to make an endless war in Afghanistan.

64 percent of Americans consider Obama’s speech as an energizing one. However, any person who would really believe it would be considered as having been brainwashed.

What President Obama is trying to sell us is actually not so bad. Health, energy, education, armed forces; every effort is made to help the American economy become healthy again. Such a theory would sound great in the lecture hall of a university, but unfortunately it can’t apply to reality.

Some old echoes from JFK

If we stand back from the situation, and if Obama has something to do that may be comparable with the conquest of the Moon, this could be the creation of a health insurance plan that will offer coverage to every American citizen, since a third of them do not have health coverage as it stands.

Unfortunately, some other Democratic presidents failed beforehand, and the most unsuccessful one in this field was Bill Clinton (and his wife Hillary, who had been in charge of this job). The lobbyists that represented the insurers had hounded her relentlessly.

Barack Obama made known at the end of the week that he would clearly expect strong reactions, just like the ones Hillary Clinton had to face. Nevertheless, he firmly said in a video that was broadcast via the Internet: “These lobbyists and special-interest groups are ready to furbish their weapons as I am speaking. My only message to them is as follows: So am I.”

We learn a lesson from the presidential campaign: Barack Obama knows how and when he has to take to the streets if necessary. We could also claim that he won the election thanks to such promises. The truth is, he has underestimated the Republicans' ability and credibility to counter his first proposal on the economic stimulus, even though their own ideas were somewhat untidy and eventually they had to retreat and reemerge with a more credible project. He was in a way elected thanks to George Bush, but thanks to his own speaking talent, too.

President Obama gave this answer to those this week who were questioning his realism about health care policies: “I’m not here to make it easy…”

It all sounds like Kennedy’s own words, especially these words: “We chose to go and walk on the Moon not because it’s easy, but because it’s complicated.”

Indeed, the similitude between Obama’s speech and the conquest of space is striking in more ways than one. John Kennedy had also asked, a few months after his swearing in, to talk in front of Congress and discuss some “urgent things relating to the nation.”

Nonetheless, there presently is a major difference between both: Kennedy won his bet. Obama’s long and winding road to deal with urgent matters is even more perilous than NASA’s experiments. He can consider himself lucky that there will be no Soviets around. Just a scared American people whose main dream is to see its sick economy getting back to a normal temperature.