For the past six decades, Democrats have been mesmerized by the Kennedy style, like adult children searching for the forever-young father who left them before his time. The pressure for candidates to fit the Kennedy mold—in looks, style and political bearing—became so oppressive that the writer Garry Wills coined a term for it: “The Kennedy imprisonment.”

The generation of politicians that immediately followed John F. Kennedy—John Kerry, John Tunney and even Republicans like John Lindsay—tried so hard to emulate JFK that they enacted impersonations: fastening the top button of their suit jackets to flap in precisely the same patterns as his, chopping the air with their hands like he did, extending their necks to mimic his chin-in-the-air stance at the lectern. In more recent years, such candidates felt freer to adopt their own mannerisms but their political posture remained pure JFK: that of the young and earnest outsider, alone on the stage, a prince suffused in a golden aura of charisma.


Now, as the 2020 contenders emerge from the wings, the Kennedy ghost is alive again, mostly in the person of former Texas Rep. Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke. Unlike the JFK mannequins, he has chosen to ape the tousled Bobby variant of the Kennedy style, honed after Dallas, that of the surviving brother searching for meaning in a strange and violent world. He even shares Bobby Kennedy’s first two names. But the 46-year-old O’Rourke must compete with an even younger Kennedy clone—the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend (Ind.), Pete Buttigieg, who (naturally) won the JFK Library’s Profile in Courage essay contest in 2000 as a sweaty-palmed high school senior. A decade later, in 2015, he won the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award from the Kennedy School at Harvard.

Among all the mini-dramas within the still-growing Democratic field, the 2020 primaries will also be a test of whether, after 60 years, after the fraying of the Kennedy family dynasty, and after the emergence of the #MeToo movement, the character of a Kennedyesque charismatic loner still stirs the Democratic imagination and excites the passions of the electorate. It’s a question that goes beyond just the horse-race odds of O’Rourke and Buttigieg, and to the core of the party’s ability to win the White House.

Top: In El Paso, Tex., Beto O’Rourke speaks to thousands of supporters during his presidential campaign kickoff rally in March 2019. Bottom: Then-Senator John F. Kennedy stands atop a car while speaking to a large crowd in Grand Prairie, Tex., during the 1960 presidential campaign. | Tamir Kalifa for Politico Magazine; Paul Schutzer/LIFE/Getty Images

One would assume that, if the Kennedy political recipe was losing its flavor in 1981, when Wills conjured the term “the Kennedy imprisonment,” it must surely be rancid by now. But even if some of the outward trappings of the Kennedy image—the high fashion, the self-satisfied smile—have fallen out of vogue, the Kennedy approach to politics and, especially, to winning a presidential election as a Democrat, are as relevant in 2020 as they were in 1960. Far from being an anachronism, JFK’s evangelistic style of leadership is still the Democrats’ most potent weapon. His is not just a proven route to the White House, but has been, for more than a half century, literally the only route for a Democrat to win the White House.

This is an imprisonment the Democrats might choose to end at their peril.




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John F. Kennedy was neither the most liberal nor the best-credentialed Democrat in the 1960 primaries, but he encapsulated the hopes and dreams of the electorate. He evoked themes that proved irresistible to liberals (generational change, a we-can-do-better scolding of a neglectful Republican stewardship, the need for national unity), but were vague enough not to alienate moderates who might be fearful of overreach.

While Kennedy’s persona—his glamour, sex appeal, erudition and speaking style—was a big part of his success, there was a more durable truth undergirding his breakthrough: Voters love Democratic values and aspirations, but are terrified of Democratic legislation. Kennedy’s vagueness on policy was as important to his success as his precision in articulating the challenges of the ’60s was.

A Youth for Kennedy campaign button. | David J. & Janice L. Frent/Corbis via Getty Images

The electorate wasn’t blind to these realities. The party’s liberal old guard, led by Eleanor Roosevelt, distrusted Kennedy and preferred Adlai Stevenson. In both the primaries and the general election, Kennedy stood accused of lacking specific policy proposals. But his reluctance to put a price tag on every priority, to make firm, unbreakable commitments, or to attach his name to every overloaded barge of a bill being pulled through the Senate served him well: Liberals saw a candidate who shared their fondest beliefs, while moderates saw a president whom they could trust to resist partisanship in favor of the broader national interest.


Kennedy’s nomination was a victory against his party’s congressional leadership, represented by his eventual running mate, Lyndon Johnson. Then, as now, close exposure to the sausage-making in the House and Senate did not inspire loyalty in the voting booth, at least for presidential aspirants. And the choice of JFK was also a rebuke to the principled left, represented by Stevenson, who had led the party to defeat in the two previous elections.

Three years later, Kennedy’s assassination produced an outpouring of sympathy so great that it carried Johnson to a record-breaking election victory in 1964. Thereafter, every Democrat who has been elected president has followed the JFK road map.

The record of the past 50-plus years is irrefutable: Whenever the party has nominated a former vice president (Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Walter Mondale in 1984, Al Gore in 2000) or a similar figure of long exposure to the public eye, such as Hillary Clinton in 2016, he or she has fallen short. The same has been the case with policy-oriented liberals like George McGovern in ’72 and Michael Dukakis in ’88.

The little-known Bill Clinton, however, passed around copies of a photo of himself as a bedazzled Boys Nation recruit pumping President Kennedy’s hand on the White House lawn. He preached a Kennedyesque message of generational change and we-can-do-better idealism to capture the party’s heart. Despite generating a suspicion that he put strategy ahead of principle, he cruised to two victories. The largely unknown Barack Obama asserted his own Camelot connection by campaigning alongside Ted and Caroline Kennedy, while Caroline penned a New York Times op-ed predicting he would be “A President Like My Father.” Obama’s message of hope and change was castigated as vague and empty, but it served the crucial purpose of inspiring liberals without alarming moderates. He won twice. Finally, there was Jimmy Carter, who seemingly came out of nowhere to win the Democratic nomination in 1976. He too evoked generational change and a hopeful, I’ll-never-lie-to-you message, and prevailed in a close race.

John Kerry tried—oh, how he tried—to be Kennedyesque in 2004, with his Massachusetts roots, JFK initials and bromance with Ted. He stressed electability over ideological purity, and he arguably performed better than fellow nominees Humphrey, Dukakis and Hillary Clinton, who lost races that were possibly more winnable than his. But in important ways, Kerry broke the model. Unlike Carter, Clinton, or, later, Obama, he wasn’t a fresh face on the national scene, nor did he offer generational change. At 60, he had been in the Senate for two decades and had first achieved notice more than three decades earlier as a veteran opposing the Vietnam War.

Kerry’s campaign serves best, perhaps, as an object lesson in what parts of the Kennedy legacy—the looks, the accent, the association with actual Kennedy relatives—have diminished in significance over time, and which remain evergreen: youth, vigor, a sense of high purpose.

There is, of course, another, less admirable, aspect to Kennedy’s political style: maintaining a sense of what might generously be called flexibility on the issues, which may be every bit as important to achieving victory as the others. Younger brother Ted—the keeper of the flame who never quite lived up to the expectations that fate placed on his shoulders—violated this precept in his own national career. His unabashed liberalism and tireless commitment to legislating helped to bring about an era of progressive change, but probably contributed to his failure to win the White House.

In July 2004, then-Senator John F. Kerry sits at his Nantucket beach house and looks over his nomination acceptance speech ahead of the Democratic National Convention. | David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images

Under Ted’s stewardship, the family brand became synonymous with policy-oriented liberalism, which probably convinced many people that Jack and Bobby had been equally earnest in pursuing Democratic legislative priorities. They were not, though they conveyed such a powerful sense of progressive values, the feeling that change was not only inevitable but righteous and necessary, building toward a greater country and a more equitable society, that they were forgiven any sins or omissions.




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The events surrounding the assassinations of President Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy cleansed the family legacy of any residue of distrust or compromise. The nation’s sense of loss quickly grew into a sense of nostalgia. Particularly after the other agonies of the ’60s and ’70s—social change, Vietnam protests, economic reversals, Watergate—Kennedy’s thousand days in office began to feel like a memory of a better time, when politics was inspiring and politicians were admired.

The #MeToo movement, however, has forced a reconsideration of the “Mad Men” era of the Kennedy presidency, of the womanizing associated with JFK and some of the men of his administration. Kennedy’s personal image is now tarnished. But there are signs that Kennedy-style presidential politics can survive the hit.

O’Rourke, who makes no disguise of his admiration of the Kennedys, evokes the less sexually aggressive Bobby rather than JFK. There’s far less swagger in Bobby’s image, crafted late in his life, after the open-bar era of the early ’60s had ended. The Bobby Kennedy of the later ’60s strived to overcome an earlier reputation for conservatism, the vestige of having once worked for the notorious Sen. Joe McCarthy, and for ruthlessness in having served as his brother’s political prod. Chastened by grief, the new Bobby climbed mountains, marched through Appalachia, and visited urban ghettos in search of understanding. He still wore suits like his brother’s and spoke with the same accent and emphasis, but he added shades of warmth and empathy. Bobby may have been late to the causes of the ’60s, but he presented his conversions as the product of deep, intensive soul-searching.

That is certainly Beto’s M.O. The onetime adolescent writer of poetry took to the road by himself in search of inspiration before deciding on a presidential run, only to find himself chastised by some observers for self-indulgence. Those same skeptics accuse him of being too conservative, despite the spirited idealism that surrounded his 2018 Senate run against Ted Cruz. His fundraising success suggests he retains a passionate grassroots following, but his early struggles on the campaign trail raise a legitimate question of whether current-day voters are simply too cynical to fall for a Kennedyesque candidate.

Should Beto succeed, it won’t be because of his mere resemblance to the Kennedys—a physical coincidence that elicits as much eye-rolling as admiration. Voters under 55 have no memory of the living Bobby Kennedy, even if a constant diet of miniseries and docudramas might lead them to think otherwise. Rather, Beto’s success would be built on the freshness of his presentation, his skateboarding spontaneity, his sense of being a man apart—apart from the corruption of Washington, the calculations of the party elites and the demands of the special interests. That’s the aspect of the Kennedy formula that remains potent.

Top left: Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind. Top right: Former Congressman Beto O’Rourke. Bottom: John F. Kennedy | AP Photo; Corbis via Getty Images

Pete Buttigieg has followed a clear Kennedy path: attending Harvard, studying in England, serving in the military, and preaching generational change and “a fresh start.” Meanwhile, he has a natural means of erasing the predatory womanizing from the JFK image: He’s gay. His extroverted husband, ubiquitous on social media, provides both the reassurance of domestic tranquility and a reminder that the Buttigieg candidacy is groundbreaking in more than just his audacity in running for the White House while serving as a small-city mayor. His fearless pursuit of the nomination, while eschewing the usual credentialing process, marks him as a man apart, too. Democratic primary voters love to make a statement and voting for a gay man may feel more refreshing, and more like a symbolic repudiation of Donald Trump, than opting for a more conventional Kennedy stand-in.

The other Democrats are, more or less explicitly, repudiating the Kennedy style. Elizabeth Warren, who occupies the Massachusetts Senate seat that launched JFK to the presidency, seems to have the Kennedy formula backward. Her M.O. has been to offer specific proposals—and, more than that, specific proposals on new and cutting-edge issues. While she can be an inspiring speaker, she has chosen to stint on rhetoric in favor of showcasing her fighting spirit. Authenticity, not charisma, is her calling card.


Joe Biden, meanwhile, is stepping into the Happy Warrior mold of the garrulous Humphrey, his fellow VP. And Adlai Stevenson would see something of himself in Bernie Sanders’ rumpled-professor style. The women candidates—Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar and Kamala Harris in particular—might reasonably wonder if the Kennedy path is even open to them; JFK’s electoral magic rubbed off on a few of his male relatives, but not his sisters, niece or daughter.

And yet if JFK’s mannerisms are subtracted from the equation, there’s no reason that a politically appealing, slightly elusive, outsider woman couldn’t replicate some of his mystique. The enduring takeaway of the past half century is not that the candidates who looked and acted the most like JFK were successful. It is rather that those who embodied his spirit of generational change, inspiring rhetoric and arms-length distance from the party establishment have prevailed, while those lacking such attributes failed.

That’s not a coincidence or an accident of history. There’s a clear logic in the idea that the party of progressive change often wins the battle for hearts and minds, but loses on practicality: People want wider access to health care, but many don’t want their own health care changed. They share the party’s values but are wary of the vehicles for change.

Democratic candidates can’t ignore that pervasive reality. JFK would be unlikely to sign on to an unfocused “Green New Deal” or make a specific pledge to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Neither, for that matter, would Bill Clinton, who fretted about raising your taxes too much, or Obama, who campaigned against a health care mandate in 2008.

Their appeal to the majority rested on their sense of promise. Tomorrow belongs to the young, the vigorous, the idealistic—a notion that might register especially powerfully when running against a 74-year-old Donald Trump.

Now, as ever, the Kennedy imprisonment is regarded by the left as an electronic dog fence—one that traps the Democrats into relying too much on compromise to achieve victory, and an over-reliance on personal charisma over party organization. Still, it’s a lot better than losing, and at its best can feel so dazzling that the boundaries of the possible seem to fade away. For the Democrats of today, as much as in 1960 or 1980, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.