I just finished reading the new book by Thurston Clarke, The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and the 82 Days that Changed America. I was literally unable to read more than ten pages at a time, alternatively weeping and cheering as I went.
Bobby Kennedy's last campaign, the 1968 campaign for the Presidency, was a marvel of the 19th-century campaign system. He didn't really run on TV, except in the form of free (or "earned") media, he went from place to place, asking people for their votes in places like Kokomo, Indiana, and Pine Ridge, South Dakota. He was positively reckless - described by Clarke and contemporaneous observers on numerous occasions as a "reverse demagogue" - someone who told people the opposite of what they wanted to hear. Every time he said that there was violence in black communities that had to be stopped, he spoke out against the injustice that motivated the violence - at least one time calling the violence "a misguided and self-destructive attempt by blacks to announce their self-worth and dignity as human beings."
He was, in short, a modern-day Micah, refusing to comfort the afflicted because his intent was to afflict the comfortable until they realized their own responsibility to comfort the afflicted.
The scary thing, though, is that with Barack Obama's campaign we may be seeing what would have happened, had Bobby lived. Obama, as you may recall if you haven't been asleep for the last year, was seen by some of his supporters as transformational, as being a prophet of progressivism, "A New Hope" if you will. Now that he has won the nomination, he has suddenly become very different - seemingly more calculating, to some more "centrist," and in general avoiding statements that might lead some to think he's "dangerously liberal," although there are those (such as my uncle with whom I spent the last week) who would believe that Obama was dangerously liberal unless he became Zombie Ronald Reagan.
I can't help but wonder whether Bobby would have done the same. Would he have "moved to the center?" There's a strong sense of "maybe" to that. There were times when Bobby's message emphasized the "law and order" side of his message - that violence had to stop. There were other times when he emphasized the need for injustice to be redressed.
But ultimately, Bobby wasn't the sort of candidate in '68 who considered the politics of what he said. He just said it, and said it so well and so convincingly that he brought along even his opponents. My best guess is that he wouldn't have become "just another candidate" had he won the nomination.
The lesson for Obama, I hope, is this: there was a reason that you were being treated like a rock star during the primaries. There was a reason that you were drawing in the hopes of millions. There was a reason that people thought they might be hearing a distant echo of gunfire when they watched you - they were hearing it echo from 1968.
Embrace that. Accept that. Decide that if you are to make an end on this campaign, let it be such an end as will be spoken of forever. Be Bobby. Be Barack. Be our hope.
Today's Meditation: thanks to poetseers.org
Today's Meditation:
I worked and then Mom and I went to Marshall's where I scored some really great looking lamps and end tables for the living room. The end tables I have right now are about as old as I am--so they are pretty close to being antiques! I have a pink lamp and 2 off white ones that look like pottery--very 1990s--time for a change! I can hardly wait to get this all together. 
Today's Meditation: thanks to poetseers.org
