Lincoln, JFK and Obama

For those of us who are not American, it is difficult to choose who the best president of the U.S. is. We don’t have their character traits, historical knowledge, everyday lives and surroundings. That leaves us with propaganda and advertising devices. I am still shocked by the media pomp and circumstance for the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, a man elevated to the altars of global mythology on the same day as his death on the streets of Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. He is still there, sanctified by his great inaugural speech and his amorous flings with Marilyn Monroe, the biggest diva of them all. Among all the praise heaped upon him, people forget the fiascos and the context of his term: Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs….

The BBC in Britain has linked three presidents: Abraham Lincoln, Kennedy and Barack Obama. It has argued that they tried to use the federal government’s powers to bring about changes in the most conservative states, which made them confront the underlying power. The first two were assassinated.

With Obama, the blockade in Congress was enough. Times are changing. If people listen to the hatred which has been professed toward him by North America’s extreme right wing, typically the tea party, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh — who has accused him of being a communist, an Islamist in disguise and of lying about his birth — it makes them afraid. It is the same hatred which is passed from parents to children. It is happens in other countries.

Exaggerations and Oversights

Like all anniversaries of major events, the memory is affectionate, and more so if people’s feelings are roused when it is marked, in the hope of selling more newspapers and magazines and increasing television audience ratings and the number of clicks on the web. There are always exaggerations and oversights. Of the three, Lincoln is the only one who achieved an essential change: the abolition of slavery in the U.S.

Poor Lyndon B. Johnson began his term of office facing the unfounded suspicion that he was part of the plot to remove JFK from presidency. Despite being deemed as less important, he was the president who signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination. He was the president who pushed for federal aid for education and culture. He created Medicare and Medicaid. He was a social president who opened the doors of polling centers to African-Americans in 1965. He had no luck with the media, but his domestic policies record is excellent. Johnson was overshadowed by the Vietnam War (which he inherited from JFK), the deployment of troops, the bombings, the napalm and the My Lai Massacre.

The Forgotten Man

During Johnson’s term in office, there were two assassinations which shook the country, most of all the assassination of Martin Luther King, which very nearly triggered a civil conflict, and the assassination of Robert Kennedy when he was aspiring to succeed him. Both men deserved to be in the White House. That second Kennedy, who enjoyed the glitz and the glamour as much as the first, seemed to be the best of the clan. Today, so many years later, Johnson is still a forgotten man.

If Lincoln was the great head of state of the 19th century in the U.S., Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in the 20th century, far more than JFK and Obama combined. It was up to him to deal with the effects of the Great Depression. He was the driving force behind the New Deal, the welfare state and Keynes’ economic theories. He also had to cope with the rise of Nazism and World War II. He is a great president who should be studied in these times of crisis, so similar to the one in the 1920s and ‘30s, when people are trying to fix a disaster.

In the 21st century, we have it easy: a little bit of Bill Clinton, until he finished his term of office in 2001, too much George Bush and then Obama. The current president is the king, if you’ll forgive my turn of phrase. His main rival was a disaster, at home and abroad, although a great majority of Americans have still not recognized it.

One of Us?

It would be unfair to conclude this article without mentioning Ronald Reagan. He was a bad Hollywood actor, a good president for the U.S. and a train wreck for Central America. Of all his roles, presidency turned out to be his most all-together one. His drive and astuteness came from his wife, Nancy.

He was a fervent anti-communist who reaped the rewards of the collapse of the USSR, which many attributed to him. However, it was the repressive systems on the other side of the Iron Curtain that deserved credit for this, systems whose ideals were far from those that Americans were claiming to defend.

Reagan seemed kind and friendly; he made funny mistakes, he confused countries and presidents and he fell asleep in meetings. He seemed normal, almost one of us. Obama also seemed like this, but because of what he was claiming to represent: change and hope. Nothing was real — neither them, nor JFK. They weren’t one of us, but one of them: the same ones as ever, disguised as one of us.