Sloppy Joe Biden may face strong political headwinds with just seven months to go before the first presidential primary, but at least he’s in good company. Assessing the Washington landscape in mid-June 1963, when John F. Kennedy set off on a European tour designed to bolster not only the NATO alliance but his own poll numbers, the British ambassador David Ormsby-Gore cabled back to London:

He will be leaving behind a disquieting domestic situation, [with] economic troubles to the fore… The Negro leaders are beginning to talk about large scale civil disobedience on a nation-wide basis… Moreover, the racial crisis is causing new difficulties for [Kennedy’s] legislative program… There has been a...