Obama has yet to show that he, like J.F.K., understands what continues to be the greatest issue of our time.

Communism has faded as a threat, but its ideal of coercive authority lives on in Russia, in China, in much of Africa, in practically all of Islamdom. If Obama is serious about claiming the mantle of J.F.K., he needs to show that he, too, understands America’s historic obligation “to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”