The Kennedy Endorsement

Heckuva speech. The cable news wags were framing it as "his last big political speech," but that's what they called his endorsement of John Kerry four years ago.

You can break out the rhetorical flourishes, but I don't think it's necessary. Kennedy was strident and very bold in his support, explicitly connecting Obama's message to that of his older brother. I was actually more struck by Obama's remarks, which were unusually emotional, talking about his father's dream of going to an American college being realized by a bill passed in the Senate by John Kennedy. This has always been Obama's gift, connecting places and people and events and showing us how we all have a stake in one another.

I barely knew him, but when, after his death, I finally took my first trip to his tiny village in Kenya and asked my grandmother if there was anything left from him, she opened a trunk and took out a stack of letters, which she handed to me.

There were more than thirty of them, all handwritten by my father, all addressed to colleges and universities across America, all filled with the hope of a young man who dreamed of more for his life. And his prayer was answered when he was brought over to study in this country.

But what I learned much later is that part of what made it possible for him to come here was an effort by the young Senator from Massachusetts at the time, John F. Kennedy, and by a grant from the Kennedy Foundation to help Kenyan students pay for travel. So it is partly because of their generosity that my father came to this country, and because he did, I stand before you today – inspired by America’s past, filled with hope for America’s future, and determined to do my part in writing our next great chapter.

That's just priceless, and in a way, in informs how his Administration would perform. He would work to end tribal violence in Kenya, not because it has any particular geopolitical significance, but because we all have a stake in a country being ripped asunder, for reasons of basic humanity as much as of national security.