Barack and Bobby

After his thunderous victory in the South Carolina Democratic primary, Senator Barack Obama told a cheering crowd of supporters that this presidential election was not about the past. It was about the future.
True enough. However, as I listen and watch this surging candidate, I can’t help but think about what has happening 40 years ago. It was 1968 and another senator in his mid-40s was running for the White House. He too was inspiring a nation torn by an unpopular war. He also was touching the hearts and minds of the nation’s youth.
His name was Bobby Kennedy. The younger brother of a slain president, Kennedy jumped into the race in the spring after President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek re-election. Kennedy railed against the Vietnam War. He spoke about the plight of the poor. He talked about how we could be a more humane nation. How we could be better. He sounded passionate, like he meant it. He was vibrant, convincing. An answer for voters, especially young ones, who were seeking a light in dark times.
Four decades later, Barack Obama appears to be re-creating that political magic. He has been critical of the Iraq war, from the beginning and with consistency. He talks about lifting up the poorest of our country. He inspires. He educates. He brings hope to people who want to shake off the past 16 years of division and turn a corner.
Kennedy’s speeches were unforgettable. Many of his words ring true today. His tone was dramatic yet healing. The night Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, Kennedy calmed an angry crowd in Indianapolis. At his older brother’s funeral in 1963, Kennedy said, “Some people see things as they are and ask why. I see things that aren’t and ask why not.”
Kennedy encouraged people to get involved, to fight for what they believe in. He once said, “We know that if one man’s rights are denied, the rights of all are endangered.”
He also spoke of the benefits to everyone of helping the less fortunate. He used to say in campaign speeches, “I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.”
Kennedy never realized his dream. He was gunned down in the kitchen of a hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, minutes after celebrating his victory in the California primary. It was an assassination the Baby Boom generation never got over.
He did leave some words for us to live by. Among them, “The future is not a gift. It is an achievement. Every generation helps make its own future. This is the essential challenge of the present.”
Enter Barack Obama in 2008. He has ignited those who support him, giving rise to the promise that he can still achieve the goal Bobby Kennedy didn’t get to accomplish.
Obama is seen as the person who could unify our country, potentially create a bridge we can use to cross some wide gaps now tearing apart our nation.
The Illinois senator has the ability to bring together people of all colors and not only because he himself is of mixed race. He speaks to people across a wide spectrum. He convinces people of the need to advance the cause of those less fortunate. He inspires people to be better citizens. He galvanizes people to care about their government. He speaks of the politics of hope.
He has told audiences, “If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.”
He talks of ideals larger than ourselves. Words that provoke thought.
“We gather to affirm the greatness of our nation,” he has said. “Not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over 200 years ago.”
Obama might also be the bridge we need to close the gulf that exists between generations. Although he is technically a Baby Boomer, born in 1961, Obama really straddles the Baby Boom generation and the generations that follow. He is someone people older and younger can admire. He might prove to be a conduit between age groups who seem to have lost touch with each other.
“The true test of the American ideal,” he has said, “is whether we’re able to recognize our failings and then rise together to meet the challenges of our time. Whether we allow ourselves to be shaped by events and history, or whether we act to shape them.”
Words like that have inspired Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John Kennedy. Today, in the New York Times, she endorsed Obama. She said he would be a president just like her father.
I’d like to echo that sentiment and put a twist on it.
Barack Obama could be the president Bobby Kennedy would have been.