Who do they think they are?
The motto for Campaign 2008 might be: Objects in the rear view mirror appear far grander than they really were. Otherwise, why are candidates so eager to associate themselves with revered politicos of yesteryear? I see Barack Obama as a charming and intelligent former Illinois legislator partway through a nothing-to-write-home about Senate term. Others look at him and see . . . JFK.
I think it was former Kennedy White House speechwriter Ted Sorensen who launched the improbable Obama-as-Kennedy idea in July. Writing in The New Republic, Sorensen saw "striking" parallels between the two men, mainly because they both lacked experience and were deemed unelectable by party regulars, Kennedy being Catholic and Obama being black.
Sorensen never mentions that John Kennedy was the son of one of the richest, most devious, and successful businessmen of the 20th century. To parrot a cliche so often directed against George Bush, John Kennedy was born on third base and thought he had hit a triple. But Sorensen is hardly the only Kennedy-ite eager to dress Obama up for a successful Camelot revival. Senator Ted Kennedy just endorsed Obama, right on the heels of Caroline Kennedy's dramatic announcement that Obama could allow Americans to "feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president."
Obama's winning the JFK mantle left only one course for John Edwards, who has that great Kennedy hair and some of the ruthlessness that characterizes the successful children of Joseph P. Kennedy. Last summer Edwards compared himself to JFK's charismatic brother Robert. Edwards ended a three-day "poverty tour" in the same Kentucky town where Robert Kennedy wound up a similar fact-finding mission during his own quest for the presidency 40 years earlier. His aim, Edwards declared, was "to end the work Bobby Kennedy started."
"Is John Edwards the next Robert Kennedy?" Newsweek asked, and then answered its own question: "John Edwards is too perfect to be Robert Kennedy." Kennedy had "authenticity," the newsmagazine says, while Edwards uses "an established script," and so on. Remember: Objects in the rear view mirror appear far grander than they really were.
Over on the Republican side, everyone knows who they want to be: Ronald Reagan. The man best suited to play The Great Communicator was his fellow actor, former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson. Shortly before his death last year, ex-Reagan aide Michael Deaver told the London Telegraph that he saw a lot of Dutch in the folksy "Law & Order" star. Thompson "is very popular in his party. He could change this whole thing and turn this primary system upside down," Deaver opined. As it happened, Fred won more cases as fake D.A. Arthur Branch than he did delegates while playing Ronald Reagan.
John McCain, who seems a good deal sharper than the late president, is falling all over himself to be Ronald Reagan, the Sequel. "I enlisted as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution," McCain declares in a campaign ad that shows him hanging around the White House with his supposed mentor. "I think of him all the time."
So, too, does Mitt Romney. "I must admit that I find the vision and the direction that Ronald Reagan laid out for this country to be very powerful and very compelling," Romney told Iowans before the January caucuses. Romney has even found solace in one of Reagan's better-known policy reversals. After he left the California governorship, Reagan discovered the joys of anti-abortion politics, just as Romney did after leaving our State House.
Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee - they all purport to be the second coming of Reagan. But only one candidate has been associated with the real Second Coming. Obama, the "savior" of his party, "has attracted Jesus comparisons since announcing his candidacy," according to Slate magazine. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago generated considerable hubbub when it displayed a student sculpture of Obama wearing Jesus' robes, with a neon blue halo behind his head.
Last year, Slate's Timothy Noah launched "The Obama Messiah Watch," which highlighted astonishing facts about the former Illinois state senator - related to George Washington! - and posed the question: Is Barack Obama the Man from Galilee?
And to think Hillary Clinton used to compare herself to Eleanor Roosevelt. What a lack of imagination!
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 