Dan Fenn, founding director of the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, Mass., spoke about his experiences in the Kennedy White House from 1961 to 1963 for an audience gathered in the Rotunda Dome Room last night.
The Center for Politics hosted Fenn for the special lecture in which he compared and contrasted the Kennedy and Obama administrations.
"There are very few key Kennedy administration officials left, 50 years after the administration, but fortunately Dan Fenn is here and willing to tell us what he knows," Larry Sabato, the center's director, said in an email.
Fenn said his role in Kennedy's administration was that of "permanent talent search. So that's how I ended up in the White House in the summer of 1961 to establish the office of staff assistant to the president."
He said one of the main differences between the administration he worked with and the current one was the size of the staff. The entirety of Kennedy's White House staff was made up of only 25 people, and the president served as his own chief of staff, Fenn said.
"I think there were about 12 people out of the 25 that had 'to the president' in their job title," Fenn said. "Now there are over 100. So things have changed."
Fenn said the transition from the modest staff Kennedy held to the current White House administration's can be attributed to Richard Nixon.
"[Staff growth] is a continuum, but the big leap was Nixon's redefinition of the presidency and its role in American life," Fenn said.
Fenn also commented on the lack of blacks working in politics in Kennedy's time.
His comparison between Kennedy and the current president is not an uncommon or irrelevant one, Sabato said.
"There are certainly lessons that the current president could learn from the predecessor he most likes to invoke," he said. "As everyone recalls, Obama was endorsed by Sen. Ted Kennedy and JFK's daughter Caroline Kennedy at a critical moment in Obama's battle with Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination."
Kyle Kondik, director of communications for the center, said the lecture was timely because this is the 50-year anniversary of the Kennedy administration.
"There's a lot of hunger for information and news on the Kennedys and the JFK presidency," Kondik said.
Sabato and the center were particularly interested in hosting the speaker because they are in the process of working on a book called "The Kennedy Half-Century," which will be published in 2013.\nLike yesterday evening's lecture, the book "looks at the continuing impact of JFK on our politics today and the impressions people have today on JFK," Kondik said.
Fenn concluded his lecture by comparing the vast problems the two presidents faced in their terms. He mentioned the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Civil Rights Movement Kennedy dealt with, but said he believes the current president's challenges are much greater.
"I can't think of a presidency in my lifetime, including Franklin Roosevelt, who has faced the depth of problems Obama has faced," Fenn said. "The politics of Congress have changed so much. The two parties used to represent a left, a middle and a right, and that meant if you wanted to get anything done, you had to work with people on the other side of the aisle ... The political system is broken ... and Obama is the victim of it and it is extraordinarily difficult for him to get things done"
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