A President Like Her Father

When Caroline Kennedy wrote a recent endorsement of Barak Obama, I was both lifted and saddened by the overwhelming reality of what she had written. I found myself longing for a day when hope, change, and the prospects of a better life were in everyone's hearts and minds.

Most poignant, were her statements about Obama being a voice of hope and change for the youngest generation. In her endorsement, she stated, "There is a generation coming of age that is hopeful, hard working, innovative and imaginative. But too many of them are also hopeless, defeated and disengaged. As parents, we have a responsibility to help our children to believe in themselves and in their power to shape their future. Senator Obama is inspiring my children, my parents' grandchildren, with that sense of possibility.

I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president - not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans."

How true her statements ring, and yet the sadness that enters my heart is overwhelming when I think that it is now over 40 years since JFK's assassination, and almost 40 years since the loss of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and we are STILL debating whether or not the country is "ready for a black President."

As one who feels strongly that our country is facing some of the most dangerous and important issues since World War Two, I am saddened that race, gender or religious conviction are still part of any debate regarding who is fit to lead us out of the morass into which our nation has fallen over the past 12 years.

Ideas, and a feeling of optimism in our nation's people to find solutions, and transcend partisan bickering, world opinion, and social economic upheaval, should be the benchmark for measuring our next leader. Discussions of gender, race, and religious convictions can do nothing but muddy the waters of an already too-long, too contentious political season.

Unfortunately, former President Clinton continues to work "behind the scenes" (not far enough behind by some people's standards) to continues to keep the race/gender issue alive. Recent comments regarding Obama's win in South Carolina comparing his campaign to that of Jesse Jackson, as well as stating that the time for a woman President is here, are all thinly-veiled efforts to keep the race in a state of chaos as a form of distraction from the actual issues and any memory of his contentious second term in office.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd made that point that "Our ubiquitous ex-president is playing his favorite uxorious game, and it goes like this: Let's create chaos and then get out of it together. You ride to my rescue or I ride to yours. We come within an inch of dying and then recapture the day by the skin of our teeth. While we're killing ourselves, we blame everyone else. We'll be heroes."

"Inside the Bill gang and the Hillary gang, there is panic and perplexity. Is Bill a loyal spouse or a subconscious saboteur? Should Hillaryland muzzle him? Give him a minder? Is he rusty? Or is he freelancing because he relishes his role as head of the party his wife is trying to take over?"

"For the first time since the Marc Rich pardon," said a friend of the Clintons, "Bill is seriously diminishing his personal standing with the people closest to him."

What does seem clear, is that Obama is not the only one who is having trouble figuring out who is actually running. The "two Presidents for the price of one" concept is being bandied about as an actual benefit, rather than the actuality of "the same two contemptible, self-serving, soap opera stars that we had before."

Make no mistake about it. If Hillary gets the nomination, our country will in fact be thrown immediately back to the "Clinton Years." However, it will be the "Clinton Years part Two," as every right-wing pundit, every cable news network and talking head, will do their best to remind us of the horrendous loss of respect, momentum, and ultimately loss of power that we all endured during the Bill-Monica-Hillary-Gingrich era.

Does anyone really want to revisit that time in our nation's history? Apparently, Bill and Hillary do.

Through the debacle that has been the Bush years, even the Clintons at their worst seem to brighten in the darkness of the post 9-11/Iraq/Freedom at the cost of Freedom era. But, is this really the best we can do?

Instead, compare the lifestyles of Bill and Hillary to another young couple in the White House. JFK's peccadilloes are as fabled and storied as Bubba Bill's. JFK may have had better taste in the women he chose to cheat with, but he was still on a collision course with disgrace, similar to that of Bubba. Both were supported outwardly by wives who turned the other cheek, time and time again, to maintain the benefits of hitching their wagon to shooting stars. Both men were great thinkers and motivators, with a weakness for doing the wrong thing when they thought nobody was looking.

Compare these two men to Barak Obama and his relationship with his wife, Michelle. If you want a strong husband and wife team, with real family values, as well as a sense of being rooted in the real world, you don't have to look any further.

After reading both of Obama's books, and watching him interact with his wife and children, it is obvious that they are a real "power couple," that derives their power from the strength of their relationship. When Michelle demanded that Barak had to quit smoking before she would allow him to run for President, you could tell that it was no passing joke between them. Her admonishment that he had to be an example to all young people was honest and heartfelt. And while quitting with the benefit of "mountains of nicotine gum," seems trite to some, it proves to me that he values her opinion, and their relationship first.

If you are looking for the kind of experience that breeds forward-thinking ideas, Barak's accomplishments, especially when emerging from a less-than-ideal, single parent childhood (and certainly not the silver-spoon life of a Kennedy), is amazing. His work in with low-income residents in Chicago, his rise to becoming the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, as well as later practicing law in voting rights and discrimination claims, while lecturing at Chicago Law School on constitutional law, is already known and well-documented.

Michelle, while being known as the wife of Barak, and mother of their two daughters, has achieved far more than most give her credit. She got an undergraduate degree from Princeton, and her JD from Harvard, she held public sector positions in the Chicago city government as an Assistant to the Mayor and Assistant Commissioner of Planning and Development. In 1993 she became Executive Director for the Chicago office of Public Allies, a non-profit organization encouraging young people to work on social issues in nonprofit groups and government agencies.

She served as the Associate Dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago since 1996 where she developed the University's Community Service Center. She then worked for the University of Chicago Hospitals beginning in 2002, first as executive director for community affairs and, beginning May, 2005, as Vice President for Community and External Affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals.

All the while, these two continue to place family and their relationship in the forefront of their actions. Can the same be said of the Clintons, or for that matter, the Kennedys?

I applaud and welcome the endorsement of Caroline Kennedy, as well as that of her Uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy. They see in Barak Obama not just a similarity in ideas, but perhaps if they are honest, and even greater sense of personal integrity and ideals.

While it is certain that Caroline has learned more about her father's shortcomings as she has lived in a real adult world that struggles to match the dreams and expectations of Camelot with the realtity of upheaval, death and destruction left in the wake of his passing in the 1960s, it seems that she is ready to lay the mantel of hope that her father wore upon someone worthy, in fact even more worthy, to wear it today.

In a political battle that is destined to get nastier before it comes to a conclusion, I can only hope that real family values, real messages of hope, and real solutions for a world needing a new sense of inclusiveness, can become the deciding factor in who wins in November.

Bill Clinton likes being the bad boy. Bill Clinton likes being the head of a party that needs a new course, but is afraid to tell tell the bully who continues to take it in the same direction. And Hillary likes being the victim who must continually make excuses for his bad behavior, while reaping the benefits of his actions.

In a real family, there is almost always a borrish lout who drinks too much, bullies his wife and children, and demands respect from everyone around him, while giving resepect to nobody. The Democrats and the rest of the free world needs to tell Bill Clinton that "enough is enough…you are no longer welcome at our table."

Thank you, Caroline, for having the courage to go against the wishes of "the family," and risk the ire of the Bully Uncle Bubba. It is that kind of courage for which we will remember your father. It is that kind of courage that may allow Barak Obama to rise above the noise, chaos and subtrafuge that is the Billary machine, and start a wave of change and hope that we have not seen since the dark days of the 1960s.