The much sought-after endorsement of Ted Kennedy, the senator from Chappaquiddick, has fallen on Barack Obama.
In a press conference that more resembled a coronation, Kennedy gave a nod to Obama’s opponent John Edwards, and a verbal backrub to Hillary Clinton before endorsing the Man from Nowhere.
Despite his lack of experience, Obama is clearly now on the fast track to the White House. Unlike past black candidates, he has not only garnered the support of African-Americans, but he has avoided playing race politics, thus drawing support from white voters as well, aided by a breathless, doe-eyed press.
From a cursory glance, Obama looks like a long-needed step into America’s future, someone who can unite people as Americans, not divide them by colors. (Whether that’s true is another question.)
So why then, are Democrats trying to drag him into their neurotic desire to relive the past?
Perhaps it’s the Kennedy connection and the fact that Uncle Teddy invoked his brother’s name repeatedly, but television commentators wasted no time in rolling out the JFK tributes and painting an Obama administration as a new “Camelot” and the “best” of the magical sixties.
Just like the years-long effort to portray Iraq as another Vietnam, the attempt to revive “the sixties” reflects a state of mind that is both juvenile and self-serving, and it wore thin almost the moment it passed the lips of Chris Matthews.
Here’s a news flash to the aging boomers who still run the media: Younger folks don’t believe the sixties were the height of civilization, and we couldn’t care less about JFK.
What we want to know — what everyone should be asking — is how is Obama going to build up this country to lead the world in the 21st century?
Keep your Camelot fantasy. What we want is the dream called America.
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