So much has been made of Sen. Obama’s likeness to John F. Kennedy. (Read Caroline Kennedy’s endorsement here.) I don’t disagree with that comparison. I think it’s spot-on. I now know how folks my age felt when they heard JFK speak and believed in him.
But I also think it’s important to look at another Kennedy – Robert. As I learn more about his candidacy and the momentum leading up to his tragic assassination in the recently-demolished Ambassador Hotel, I feel a profound sense of loss for what we missed out on as a country. RFK would have most likely won the nomination and election, and the country would have come out of the 1960s very differently. But couple his assassination with that of Martin Luther King, Jr., and you have the death of part of the American spirit, the extinguishing of a light that our generation really hasn’t seen.
So when I hear Barack Obama speak, I feel the same way I’ve heard many others describe their feelings of hearing RFK or MLK speak. There is a gut feeling of hope that things can change direction, that partisanship and divisiveness has lost its sting, that folks can start seeing each other again as human beings and not through labels and affiliations.
Don't wipe the blade 