Kennedy: Goals 1960

Last week, I visited the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Dorchester for the first time, having covered the Republican National Convention in August and hungering for some solid Democratic ideals.

The ride to the museum was a journey in itself, since I had never ventured past South Station on the Red Line T. Emerging from the subterranean maze into open space and ocean-blanched light provided a pleasant change from the cluttered streets near Downtown Crossing.

The bus ride to the museum was similarly enlightening, and a little ironic. To get to the library honoring perhaps the most quintessential Harvard man in history, you take a trip through the modernist brick architecture of UMass-Boston. It doesn't quite conjure visions of the Yard at sunset.

But once inside the building itself, an oceanside edifice designed by I.M. Pei, the atmosphere changes. You examine a series of photographs of the Kennedy clan, realize that Kennedy's senior thesis on British politics became a best-seller, watch an understated 17-minute film about his life through 1960, and then enter the main hall, which showcases mementos, TV footage and documents from July 1960 to November 22, 1963, when Kennedy died.

What immediately struck me in the "convention hall" was how similar everything seemed to the gathering I had just attended in San Diego. The state identification cards were the same three-sided posters encasing a pole. The pictures showed similarly devout throngs of supporters. And the "election room" footage from the night Kennedy won seemed identical to our modern coverage, except it was in black-and-white.

But as I walked through the hall, I began to notice significant differences between 1960 and 1996. Kennedy spoke in his inaugural address on a clear, cold January day of a "New Frontier"; we speak of lowering the deficit. Kennedy set goals and started programs that everyone in the country could feel a part of directly or indirectly, like the space program and the Peace Corps; we scale back such programs and look around for more to prune. Most important, Kennedy, in his famous "ask not" quotation and elsewhere, asked the American people to participate in the governing of their country and to make sacrifices for the good of the nation; our politicians believe they must bribe the voters to get elected.

Instead of giving Americans a plan we can believe in, with concrete goals and opportunities for participation, Bob Dole is offering pabulum with a tax plan that could maybe work on Mars.

President Clinton has fared slightly better, with his Americorps program and sadly failed attempt at universal health care, but he has not captured the imagination of a nation either.

Kennedy had the Cold War to spur a nation to action. We don't have that, but we can create a war on the educational front. California's Republican Gov. Pete Wilson this year implemented a law requiring elementary school classes to contain no more than 20 students; Clinton should do the same nationally. He should up the ante on science and math education, selling bonds to support funding just as if we were trying to best the Russians in space.

Clinton could sign the real welfare bill as he has promised, could appoint a professional to ensure that we get universal health care, could make social policy changes the likes of which we have not seen since the times of Kennedy and Johnson. He must seize the minds and energies of Americans with a plan that doesn't merely patch holes.

Hanging on my wall is a poster from the Kennedy Library of a Norman Rockwell painting titled, "A Time for Greatness," depicting Kennedy's speech at the July 1960 Democratic National Convention. A president and a country cannot leap to greatness with the support of the people and without clear, positive goals. That is the challenge of the next president, and that is the challenge of this election year. Those who doubt that need only visit the library and stare in awe at the ocean through Pei's glass-enclosed pavilion. That is the awe we need our president to inspire.

Sarah J. Schaffer's column appears on alternate Fridays.