Heck, in his day Kennedy was pretty “exotic”, or at least many of the people who’d had misgivings about a black president were also ones likely to have had misgivings about a Catholic one.
Golly, that brings back memories of my parents saying “We’re not prejudiced, we’re just concerned. What if the Pope ordered Kennedy to launch nuclear missiles? Would he be a Catholic first, or an American?”
By the time a Mormon ran for President, they’d apparently gotten over it…
I never associated Obama’s first name with the religion of Islam. But I did note that it was somewhat unusual. After all, over the past almost half century, POTUS first names have been pretty boring.
In the early years, we had presidents with pretty boring first names, too – George and John and Thomas and James, etc. Yawn.
But a president with an unusual first name is really not all that, well, unusual. We’ve had Grover, Rutherford, Lyndon, Woodrow – and many whose names while not that odd are not that common, either – Franklin (twice), Calvin, Dwight, Warren, Chester.
I just hope we don’t have another President with a boring first name like Donald, but a not-that-common Hillary.
We’ve only ever elected one Catholic, and he got shot.
Most of that nonsense comes from his *middle *name, which typically is. You still see the occasional idiot, even on this board, type it in capitals.