The Power of Influence
by Don Wrege
Driving home from the cigar shop after buying a short smoke called a "Cuban Bullet" and a copy of December's "Cigar Aficionado Magazine," (which
features a fine oil painting of John Kennedy holding a cigar) the irony hit me. (A Cuban Bullet and JFK?)
Assassination conspiracies aside, all the impeachment talk on the car
radio caused me to compare the two Democrat presidents separated by so
much more than just a few decades.
John F. Kennedy was an extremely popular president during his thousand days in
the Oval Office and was reportedly Bill Clinton's hero and inspiration. Kennedy
used his unprecedented popularity to fuel some of the most dramatic social change
in America's history by promoting equality among the races and integration. He
leveraged his force of character and vision to propel a nation's imagination into
space and eventually, as he proposed, on to the moon.
William Jefferson Clinton, because of his own personal failings, has had to use
his powerful popular capital to simply keep his job and his pension. We can only
imagine what might have been accomplished by a modern day president with the
backing of sixty to seventy percent of the American people (if you believe the
polls) unfettered by crippling controversy of his own making.
JFK's detractors would argue that his Sixties-era administration was fraught with
incompetence, led us into Viet Nam and brought the world to the brink of nuclear
disaster during the Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy's supporters, on the other
hand, remember how a vast and troubled nation was united by affection for its
charismatic leader.
In contrast, Clinton's self-serving attempts to survive in office have divided
our country. There is no vast Right Wing Conspiracy; merely a morally weak power
monger with a drive for self preservation who has taken the unqualified affection
of his followers and squandered it. Squandered it selfishly on himself, defining
the very opposite of true leadership.
Light anyone?
