Tuesday, January 29, 2008

"A President Like My Father"

My own presidential preferences aside, I recognize that this endorsement by Caroline Kennedy of Senator Barack Obama's bid for the White House is quite powerful -- and may put him over the top in the race for the Democrat nomination in some of the Super Tuesday states.

From her op-ed that appeared in yesterday's New York Times:

I want a president who understands that his responsibility is to articulate a vision and encourage others to achieve it; who holds himself, and those around him, to the highest ethical standards; who appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get involved.


I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

If Obama does ultimately win the Dem. nomination (which I doubt), I don't think it would have anything to do with CK's endorsement.

Most of Obama's supporter's are too young to remember Kennedy. And the Kennedy name really evokes the 'old guard' liberals that today's young progressives look on with disdain as well.

Many of Obama's older supporters seem not to wax nostalgic about the good old Kennedy days either. Remember, Kennedy may have been 'friends' with the MLKs and Cesar Chavezes, But the actual realization of the 'progressive dream' of the time didn't come about until the CRA of 1968 which came about during LBJ and was passed by a majority Republican congress.

Sorry buddy. Gotta disagree.

Unknown said...

I just read CK's endorsement in its entirety.

Sounds like a bunch of high-falutin' rhetoric to me.

Paul Snatchko said...

Truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

David Brooks has a good NYT column on this today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/opinion/29brooks.html?em&ex=1201755600&en=c1d97d5641325d67&ei=5087%0A

Money graph:

The audience at American University roared. It was mostly young people, and to them, the Clintons are as old as the Trumans were in 1960. And in the students’ rapture for Kennedy’s message, you began to see the folding over of generations, the service generation of John and Robert Kennedy united with the service generation of the One Campaign. The grandparents and children united against the parents.