Political analysts try to quantify public opinion, but one thing they have a hard time putting into numbers is style. Yet it matters — a lot.
In his first 99 days as president, Barack Obama has impressed his toughest critics with his verbal dexterity, cool demeanor and 100-watt smile. Even some normally jaded analysts rate him the best natural politician in the White House in their lifetimes.
To find a comparable phenomenon, one must go back almost half a century to the presidency of John F. Kennedy. Kennedy was then, as Obama is today, young, articulate, charming, physically graceful, with an attractive young family.
Like Obama, Kennedy was a trailblazer. Just as Obama is the first African-American president, Kennedy was the first Roman Catholic to hold the office. In a nation where white Protestants have always been the majority or near-majority of voters, Kennedy and Obama both reached the presidency without their support. Sixty-three percent of white Protestants voted against Kennedy, and 65 percent of white Protestants voted against Obama.
Yet once installed in the presidency, Kennedy proved to be hugely popular, perhaps even more so than Obama has in his first 99 days. The Gallup poll showed Kennedy’s job approval running near 70 percent for almost the whole 1,000 days of his presidency, falling below that level only when he lost the support of white Southerners when he endorsed the civil rights bill in June 1963. Voters rallied to him when he admitted he made a mistake on the Bay of Pigs and stuck with him after revelations of how close America had come to nuclear war in the Cuban missile crisis.
One gets a sense that Americans wanted their first Catholic president to succeed then — and that they want their first black president to succeed today.
Style helped. The first Catholic president was stylistically far different from the stereotype of an Irish pol. In his presidential news conferences — the first to be televised live — he showed utter self-confidence, a sense of command and a self-deprecating sense of humor. He had “a casual sense of grandeur,” British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan said, “an aristocratic touch.”
Similarly, Obama is stylistically far different from the stereotype of a black community organizer. Though he has never held executive office and was a state senator just five years ago, Obama has the same self-assurance that he showed when he was president of the Harvard Law Review. Like Kennedy, he seems to have no doubt he belongs in the Oval Office.
Kennedy had such star power that a long-playing record affectionately lampooning him and his family topped the sales chart. Obama’s star power is evident from the millions of views of Obama Girl on YouTube last year.
Americans never seemed to tire of Kennedy; his freshness seemed to constantly renew itself.
Over the long campaign and in his first months in office, Obama has shown the same quality. But with the nation facing dire economic problems at home and intractable problems abroad, Obama’s style will be put to a sterner test than Kennedy ever faced.
