The parallel courses of Obama and JFK

For veterans of Democratic conventions, a dwindling bunch, Barack Obama's speech — its spectacular outdoor setting, the wonderful weather, the breakthrough nature of the nominee himself, even his message — was a sentimental journey back in time.

The time was 1960, the place was the Los Angeles Coliseum, the man accepting the Democratic nomination was John F. Kennedy. I was there, a young reporter for the Newark (N.J.) News, and much of what happened that day long ago came back to me as I watched Obama deliver his address.

The similarities are striking. It's history in the process of repeating itself — not exactly, by any means, but closely enough to evoke long-ago memories.

Kennedy, like Obama, was something new — a young Roman Catholic who wrested the nomination from the Protestant establishment that had ruled the Democratic Party for more than 150 years. It's much the same for Obama, an African-American who has ended 200 years of white male monopoly of all major-party presidential nominations.

Kennedy would confound pollsters, as Obama does now. How do you estimate the strength or weakness of a candidate for whom there is no predecessor, no past national standard; someone who triggers obscene prejudices and rattles loyalties in both parties?

Like Obama today, Kennedy was "different." Like Obama, he tackled that difference head-on in a speech to Protestant ministers in Houston, not unlike Obama's disquisition on racism in Philadelphia. Kennedy urged Americans not to base their vote on the thing that made him different — his religion — just as Obama asks voters to disregard that which makes him different — his race.

"I realize that I am not the likeliest candidate for this office," Obama said. "What the naysayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me. It's been about you."

Even the core message of their two campaigns, 48 years apart, is stunningly the same — change.

For Kennedy, change meant the passage of power "to a new generation"; he would become the first president born in the 20th century. For Obama, change means a new birth of bipartisanship in Washington and an end to stalemate on vital issues.

Kennedy, speaking in the depths of the Cold War, spoke of a "new frontier of unknown opportunities and perils ... unfulfilled hopes and unfilled threats."

Obama, too, invokes hope, and he too talked Thursday night of the need to defeat the threat of this time, terrorism: "We need a president who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past."

Kennedy was a young man, 43 years old, as is Obama, 47, both pied pipers to a new generation of young voters stirred to life politically by the idealism they believe their idols personify.

Like Obama, Kennedy confronted claims that he was too youthful and inexperienced to lead the country at a critical time. Much of the criticism of Kennedy came from Republicans, but some Democrats and many independents shared those uncertainties, too. It's the same today for Barack Obama.

Obama is well aware of the similarities. He doesn't allude to it, but his decision to take his historic night — and a speech that could make or break his presidential bid — to a site so similar to the one Kennedy chose is telling. For Obama seeks to make history just as John Kennedy did, one year before Obama was born.