EDITORIAL: Mocking John F. Kennedy

OPINION:

The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation had a momentous announcement on March 2. The foundation would honor Barack Obama, who was off on a shopping excursion with Michelle at the time, with the JFK prize for “elevating the standard of political courage in a new century.”

Mr. Obama’s presidency, the foundation said, “consistently reflected in so many ways, big and small, the definition of courage” articulated by JFK in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1957 book, “Profiles in Courage.”

So what courageous events in Mr. Obama’s presidency attracted such admiration of the judges? They cited Obamacare, which is now collapsing all around us; his deal with Iran, which preserved the mullahs’ program for developing a nuclear bomb, and returned $150 billion in assets frozen abroad, and his rapprochement with Cuba, for which the United States received nothing in return, not even repatriation of criminal fugitives.

The Profile in Courage award has lost whatever remaining cachet and credibility it had, and dishonors Mr. Kennedy, whose personal courage in combat in the South Pacific during World War II and his political courage in standing up to the Soviet Russians at the nadir of the Cold War, is the stuff of legend (though it was not legend, but real). The prize survives as a trophy awarded to liberals by liberals. The JFK prize now joins the Nobel Peace Prize in Mr. Obama’s umbrella and overshoes closet in his fortified mansion in Kalorama, awarded for doing nothing only 10 months after he was inaugurated.

The Nobel committee dressed up its justification by citing what it calls Mr. Obama’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Yes, indeed. He drew red lines in the sand in Syria, fooling no one, and he promptly forgot about it. He dismissed ISIS as a trivial threat by “the junior varsity” when he could have done something about it, and rolled over and went back to sleep when Islamic terrorists killed an American ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi. All he accomplished in the liberal mind (and it was enough) was that he was not George W. Bush, on whom he blamed his own mistakes for years into his presidency.

Nevertheless, it’s the JFK Library Foundation’s prize, and the foundation can give it to whomever it wants, even posthumously to Caligula’s horse. George Bush the elder was honored in 2014, but only “in recognition of the political courage he demonstrated when he agreed to a 1990 budget compromise which reversed his 1988 campaign pledge not to raise taxes.” That contributed mightily to his losing his 1992 re-election bid to Bill Clinton.

Caroline Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama in his first campaign for president in 2008 in a fawning op-ed essay in The New York Times titled “A President Like My Father.” She wrote that “I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.”

Miss Kennedy was a mere child when her father was president, and she can take our word for it that Barack Obama is nothing like her father. Mr. Obama’s only prior qualification was service in the Illinois Senate, which was distinguished by his votes of “present” on issues he was afraid to take a stand on. A profile, sure enough, but no courage there.