Yesterday, Barack Obama's supporters were surprised as Maria Shriver, Kennedy cousin and wife of California's Republican governor, came onto the stage with her cousin Caroline and Oprah Winfrey, and endorsed Obama.
Some noteworthy endorsements in the Democratic primary have come from America's unofficial royal family, the Kennedys.
Ted Kennedy and his niece Caroline, the daughter of his brother the late President John F. Kennedy, as well as Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert F. Kennedy, have all endorsed Obama. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has picked up the endorsement of three of Ethel's children, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., noted environmental activist.
Whether these endorsements balance each other out, whether some carry more weight than others, or whether they don't mean anything at all remains to be seen. While the Kennedy family can still make news, their glory has faded substantially from the high point of their popularity and power in the 1960s.
Of course, people my age still remember JFK and RFK, but people below the age of fifty have no real connection to them. Though I was only in grammar school at the time, I remember the day JFK was elected and the horrible days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which Kennedy successful navigated through.
I remember the glamour surrounding the Kennedy White House, the beauty of the new First Lady, who unbelievably was only in her thirties, and the use of the story of Camelot as a metaphor for the administration.
Later, when I was sitting in a High School classroom, I remember the intercom unexpectedly coming on with the words "The president of the United States is dead." I remember having the day off for the funeral, and sitting glued to the television set, with its black and white images of a little boy saluting as the horse drawn casket passed by, a beautiful woman, her face covered in a black veil, holding that little boy's hand and later, flanked by her brothers-in-law Robert and Edward, walking behind the funeral cortege.
I didn't know then what the assassination of that president might mean, as I didn't realize what the assassination of his brother, some five years later, would mean for the country or more specifically for the Democratic Party. As I look back now at those two tragic and violent events, I see how much they traumatized Democrats, and allowed the Republican Party to dominate American politics for several decades to come.
It was after the assassination of RFK, and the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., that something drastically changed for Democrats, leaving them wandering in the wilderness without a leader. Imagine, if you will, what might have happened to the Republican Party had the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan succeeded, and been followed by the assassination of someone like John McCain, perhaps, and then Newt Gingrich or even Rush Limbaugh. The party would most definitely have been devastated and left in disarray for years. It's not that new leaders wouldn't emerge, it's that something inside Republicans would have been so traumatized, so overcome with sadness and loss that it would lose its power.
That's what happened in the seventies. All the things the Democrats stood for: civil rights, equality, opposition to war, progressive tax policies, and so on, lost steam after the sixties. Even the antiwar movement, which has been so artfully used against Democrats ever since, and as recently as in the last presidential election, lost steam in the early 1970s, as troops began to come home, Richard Nixon began "peace talks," and the nation turned to the next presidential election. Ultimately, that election led to the Watergate scandal, which should have helped the Democrats regain substantial power, but it didn't. The short and failed presidency of Jimmy Carter made things worse as it gave Reagan Republicans an opening to take power for the next 12 years.
Election after election, starting with 1968, the year of the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, Democrats nominated weak candidates: Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. In all those years, only one Democrat, Jimmy Carter, became president, and he was defeated in his bid for a second term. And in reality, Carter's victory was more likely a vote against Gerald Ford and his pardon of Nixon, than it was a vote for him.
Then along came Bill Clinton, who finally gave the Democrats two presidential victories in a row. He was charismatic and young, and his popularity gave Democrats hope that their recovery, and a return to government that would focus on needs of the people, had finally begun. Of course, Bill Clinton's behavior gave the Republicans a chance to weaken him and his potential successor, and so the Democratic comeback didn't last. Once again the nation has been inflicted with eight years of Republican domination while the anger, frustration and demoralization of Democrats continued.
This year is so different from previous years. The entry of so many Democratic candidates into the primaries, and the popularity of two non-traditional candidates, has energized Democrats as they haven't been energized since 1960. I don't understand why some of the younger Kennedys have endorsed Hillary Clinton, but I think I know why the Kennedys who endorsed Obama did so. I believe they see a return of the energy that characterized JFK's campaign and presidency, a presidency tragically cut short. Furthermore, they see something in this young dynamic figure that reminds them of their brother, father, uncle and brother-in-law who was once such a bright star in the party. Obama represents to them a new day for the Democratic Party, but unlike the new day that dawned with the election of JFK, a day that might last. Obama's candidacy is one of optimism, hope and energy that comes with turning a page and moving the country in a new direction, not just for a few years, but for a generation. His candidacy offers a chance to finally overcome and leave behind the trauma of the sixties that cut short the hope and energy of an entire generation of Democrats.
Although Hillary Clinton would undoubtedly move the country in a different direction as well, some of us ordinary voters, along with a few members of the Kennedy family, who lost so much along with us in the 1960s, believe a Clinton presidency would still have one foot in a past that brought shame and disappointment to Democrats and helped hand the government back to those who are intent on destroying it. And the divisiveness that characterized the Clinton years is not something we relish returning to. We don't want the kind of change represented by Bill Clinton, change that will disappear after four or eight years because of a leader's raw ambition and blatant pathology. This time, we want change that will last, change that goes beyond a family dynasty, whether that dynasty's name is Clinton or Kennedy.
To us, Obama represents that change.
