Obama Going To Pull A Kennedy?

[Annie]

Time for a new generation. It's pretty long:

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/061231/8obama.htm

...Comparisons. In his new book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama makes a rather audacious comparison–indirectly raising the prospect that he has a generational appeal reminiscent of John F. Kennedy's in 1960 and signaling that he is ready to capitalize on baby boomer fatigue. "The politics of today suffers from a case of arrested development," Obama writes. "In the back-and-forth between [President Bill] Clinton and [former House Speaker Newt] Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004, I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the baby boom generation–a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago–played out on the national stage. The victories that the Sixties generation brought about–the admission of minorities and women into full citizenship, the strengthening of individual liberties, and the healthy willingness to question authority–have made America a far better place for all its citizens. But what has been lost in the process, and has yet to be replaced, are those shared assumptions–that quality of trust and fellow feeling–that bring us together as Americans."

One of his objectives, it seems, is to set himself apart from Hillary Clinton. "Hillary Clinton is very much a creature of the 1960s and the 1970s, when she came of age," says Boston University historian Julian Zelizer. Obama seems to be trying to pigeonhole her as a politician stuck in the past...