OK, first of all, everyone really should acknowledge that HRC was trying to compare JFK and LBJ, not LBJ and MLK. The remark was really badly phrased, so it is not surprising that folks misinterpreted it, but the full context of the quote is clear if you read carefully. (I am leaning Obama these days, so this isn't a pro-Clinton diary.)
However, let's also note that the JFK / LBJ comparison doesn't work out so well for Clinton. It is just tone deaf to pick the LBJ role for yourself and the JFK role for your opponent! JFK is a huge hero of the party (listen to Richardson in the last debate), whereas LBJ is not.
It does strike me that the JFK / LBJ comparison is really useful, though, in showing the limits of both "hope" and "experience." JFK brought the country together and many remember that era as the best of times for the country, but historians often don't rank the actual accomplishments of that tragically short presidency very high. Maybe if he had lived ....
LBJ's experience really was critical in getting the civil rights bill actually passed, of course only after a consensus had been built in the much of the country by much less cautious and "realistic" voices. (One might call them "fighters" and "hopers".) LBJ is rightly remembered for this great accomplishment.
On the other hand, LBJ's "experience" led him to believe the "conventional wisdom" that the only possible course of action in Vietnam was escalation. Younger and less experienced voices spoke out against it, but LBJ didn't listen. His Presidency was shattered, and so was his party and the progressive coalition, which splintered into the hated "Liberals" and the anti-war Radicals.
So what's the lesson for "hope" vs. "experience"? That these words are too simple, they are campaign slogans that obscure both the similarities and the differences between the candidates.
A successful president will build coalitions through hope and inspiration, will fight hard for some goals and yet compromise on others. She or he will be guided by experience governed by judgment and wisdom, rather than be fooled, as in Vietnam, by past experience into making faulty decisions. Sorry, that's life, it doesn't reduce to a slogan.
I still like Obama, though, I just don't dislike HRC and JRE.