Commentary: Is Barack Obama Tough Enough to Be President?

By: Gregory P. Kane

Is Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois and likely the next president of the United States, tough enough for the job?

Obama may be too darned nice to be president. Do you have to be a raging S.O.B. to be president? Well, no, but it sure does help.

President Lyndon Johnson -- whom Obama never mentioned in his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination -- was one mean S.O.B. when he was in the White House. But, with some help from people like Clarence Mitchell Jr. of the NAACP, Johnson was able to get the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act through Congress, over the opposition of many of his fellow Southern Democrats.

Johnson also crammed through Congress much of his “Great Society,” anti-poverty legislation that led to programs like Head Start, Upward Bound and the Job Corps. His predecessor, President Kennedy -- whom Obama mentioned quite a bit in his acceptance speech -- wasn’t the mean S.O.B. Johnson was. Kennedy couldn’t get the civil rights legislation passed. He let Southern Democrats intimidate him so much that when whites rioted in Oxford, Miss., in 1962 to keep James Meredith out of the University of Mississippi, Kennedy actually desegregated an integrated U.S. Army military police battalion to appease the racists. Through his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, President Kennedy ordered battalion commanders to leave their black troops home.

You can look that up.

COMMENTARY....