I'm JFK! No, I'm JFK!

In an election in which there are a lot of potential "firsts", such as the first woman president, first black president, first Hispanic president, first Mormon president, etc., John F. Kennedy has suddenly become very popular as the person the candidates want to point to as someone who defied the odds and got elected anyway. Hillary Clinton is making a big effort to co-opt the Kennedy legacy:

March 11, 2007 -- NASHUA, N.H. - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton invoked the campaign of the nation's lone Catholic president, John Kennedy, last night as she talked about her challenge in becoming the first female commander-in-chief.

"He was smart, he was dynamic, he was inspiring and he was Catholic. A lot of people back then [1960] said, 'America will never elect a Catholic as president,' " the White House hopeful told the New Hampshire Democrats' 100 Club fund-raiser here.

"But those who gathered here almost a half century ago knew better," she said. "They believed America was bigger than that and Americans would give Sen. John F. Kennedy a fair shake, and the rest, as they say, is history."

Noting women are "the majority" of voters and are in the workforce in "record numbers," she added, "So when people tell me 'a woman can never be president,' I say, we'll never know unless we try."

Kennedy's name is most often invoked by supporters of Clinton's main Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, usually comparing their charisma.

Yes, Kennedy beat the odds (thanks to some creative voting by the Chicago machine and associated dead people), but the reality is, if Kennedy was running today I'm not even sure he'd be a Democrat. His economic policies certainly fit more into today's conservatism than today's liberalism, and his muscular foreign policy would be shunned by today's Democrats. Neither Clinton or Obama are going to want their policies closely compared to Kennedy's for they will surely fall short.