JFK-Obama oddities: the cover of LIFE, the number 44, perhaps conception itself

When President-elect Barack H. Obama takes office on Jan. 20, 2009, he will become the first United States president born after the midpoint of the 20th Century. Both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were born in 1946. In a generational sense, at least, the presidential torch has truly been passed.

John F. Kennedy was almost seven months into his presidency when Obama was born on Aug. 4, 1961. In light of the early support Sen. Edward Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg gave to Obama, It is especially fitting that the first president born after 1950 is a “Kennedy baby.”

In an odd numeric coincidence, JFK (born May 29, 1917) was 44 when Obama was born. Obama will become the 44th president. In an even stranger Kennedy-Obama "media coincidence," the LIFE Magazine issue of Aug. 4, 1961, the day Obama was born, features JFK on the cover.

Newsweek’s Jessica Bennett even goes so far as to speculate in a Nov. 15 report for the magazine that Obama may have been conceived on the night Kennedy was elected, which was Nov. 8, 1960.

All this led The Punditty Project to wonder what JFK was doing the day Obama was born. Records for that day show that Kennedy was commending FBI special agent Francis Crosby and INS official Leonard W. Gilman for their "level-headed" roles in capturing two hijackers of a Continental Airlines jet in El Paso, Texas. In addition, Kennedy also congratulated Admiral Alfred Richmond, commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, on the occasion of its 171st anniversary.

President Kennedy’s inaugural address contained these stirring and memorable words: "Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world."

President-elect Obama, born in the second half of the 20th century, represents yet another "new generation" of leadership. In approximately two months, Obama will deliver his own inaugural address. With a combination of high hopes and cautious optimism, The Punditty Project and all its imaginary subsidiaries will be watching.

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