Not quite the next JFK

DELIVER A dynamite speech. Grab some quick time in Washington. Write two best-selling books. And, last but not least, look real fine in a bathing suit .

Barack Obama is making headway in presidential politics by following a formula John F. Kennedy would appreciate: promise change, ooze charisma, and downplay experience.

The junior senator from Illinois also brings a new element to the JFK equation: his race. He is aiming to become the nation's first black president.

The Kennedy model works well for Obama, but only up to a point.

Compared with Obama, JFK was a seasoned political veteran. When he announced his presidential candidacy in January 1960, Kennedy had already represented Massachusetts in Congress for 13 years, first in the House of Representatives and then in the US Senate. Even that resume didn't stop Richard M. Nixon, the vice president and Republican nominee, from challenging Kennedy's gravitas and credentials for the White House during one of their legendary televised debates.

Kennedy benefited from the new, 20th-century media environment, with looks and grace that easily won out over Nixon's sweaty lip and grim demeanor.

So far, Obama loves the media, and the media love him back. But there's peril in its infinite 21st-century embrace. For an illustration, go to YouTube.com, search "John Edwards hair", and watch two minutes and one painful second of the former senator from North Carolina fixating on his locks to the tune of "I Feel Pretty."

Obama will have to negotiate those same YouTube waters; he already got a taste of what is to come from that swimsuit shot taken by paparazzi while he was vacationing with his family in Hawaii.

The Illinois senator is promoting a vaguer version of JFK's "New Frontier." In the "Message from Barack" posted on his website to announce the formation of a presidential exploratory committee, Obama told voters , "I've been struck by how hungry we all are for a different kind of politics." Details, presumably, will follow about the precise nature of the different kind of politics he is talking about.

In the meantime, Obama weaves pretty words around the demand for change that many politicians read into last November's election results: "Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence that we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions," he said.

Obama is selling himself as "something new." By his definition, that means someone who is not yet an entrenched part of the Washington establishment.

Oddly enough, that was part of George W. Bush's appeal in 2000, when he ran against the consummate Washington insider, Vice President Al Gore.

Bush was a Texas governor who needed foreign policy tutorials before he took office. Once in office, he relied upon longtime Washington insiders such as Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Under Bush, the inexperienced outsider, this country invaded Iraq and is now desperately trying to find a way out of that conflict.

Then again, Obama's life experience is much broader than Bush's. He was a community organizer, taught constitutional law, lived for a time in Indonesia, and has traveled to the Middle East, Africa, and Iraq. When it comes to Iraq, he was a vocal opponent in the Illinois Legislature when the vote to authorize war was taken in Washington.

But the excitement about him isn't just a function of his resume or political positions. Obama's heritage -- his father was born in Kenya, his mother in Kansas -- is a big part of what makes him seem atypical. As with Deval Patrick, the new governor of Massachusetts, skin color sets Obama apart in a way that helps him make the case for change. "I think race, in Deval's case, helped," said Doug Rubin, a top Patrick campaign adviser. "Because of it, voters couldn't tag him as a status quo candidate."

Rubin adds, "with Obama, it's more complicated. You have issues in states where it will be a problem for him." For the moment, however, Obama is the beneficiary of buzz that the rest of the Democratic field, including Hillary Clinton, can only envy.

I'm not ready to climb aboard the Obama bandwagon. New is nice, but in perilous times, new is not enough. Neither is hope, the other underpinning of Obama's nascent presidential campaign.

While Obama has a good model to follow, he has a way to go before he deserves billing as the next JFK.

Joan Vennochi's e-mail address is vennochi@globe.com.