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The Next Kennedy?

By Bekki

Sunday, Caroline Kennedy wrote a New York Times editorial endorsing Barack Obama for president. She wrote that qualities of "leadership, character, and judgment" were more important in this election than policy choices and experience. She compared Obama to her father, saying that both men shared a vision of the American Dream that people desperately needed to believe in.

Monday, Senator Edward M. Kennedy made a public announcement that he too would be supporting Obama's campaign. The article mentioned that after he learned of Ms. Kennedy's op-ed piece, he decided to make his support public.

I'm not sure what the Kennedy's stand to gain by endorsing one candidate over another. It doesn't seem likely that the clan will produce another JFK. Perhaps, by adopting Obama, they are trying to recreate the past, to bring another idealistic young man into the office of the presidency. Certainly there's still a kind of magic still surrounding the Kennedy name. Evoking an image of the young JFK, the Kennedy's say Obama can "inspire" and "change" the country.

I would ask one question. Has the tide of the country changed so much in the past forty years that its governance is now too complex for the idealists, impossible for any but the experienced and vetted to navigate with any sort of certainty?

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on January 29, 2008 (boomark / email).