Kennedys endorse Obama

WASHINGTON – The keepers of the Camelot legacy - the family of President Kennedy, who inspired a generation of Americans with his soaring rhetoric before his assassination in 1963 - embraced Sen. Barack Obama for president today.

In a rousing speech at American University, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) called Obama, a freshman senator from Illinois, a leader “who can lift our spirits … who has the power to truly inspire and make America great again.”

With Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, President Kennedy’s daughter, and his son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I., at his side and with other members of the Kennedy family in the audience, Ted Kennedy rhetorically placed the mantle of his brother’s legacy on Obama’s shoulders.

Ted Kennedy praised the other two Democratic candidates - former Sen. John Edwards and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton - and vowed to support whichever one wins the Democratic nomination.

“Let there be no doubt, we are all committed to seeing a Democratic president in 2008,” said the 73-year-old Kennedy. “But I believe there is one candidate who has extraordinary gifts of leadership and character matched to extraordinary demands of this moment in history.”

Borrowing a line that Clinton has used to argue that she is more experienced, Kennedy said of Obama, “I know that he’s ready to be president on Day One.”

To an exuberant rally of students at American University, Kennedy recalled the promise of his brother’s leadership in the face of elders such as President Truman, who argued against turning the White House over to a new generation.

“Have the courage to choose change,” Kennedy thundered. “It is time now for a new generation of leadership. It is time for Barack Obama.”

Obama called Kennedy “the lion of the Senate” and thanked him for his endorsement. “I know the cherished place the Kennedy family holds in the hearts of the American people,” he said. “His endorsement is more than just politics to me, it’s personal.”

Though too young to remember JFK - he was born in 1961, the year Kennedy was sworn in - Obama said he took inspiration from the legacy of Kennedy and his brother, Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-N.Y.), who was assassinated while seeking the presidency in 1968.

“They inspired my own sense of what is possible,” he said.

Schlossberg, who first publicly endorsed Obama in an op-ed article in the New York Times on Sunday, said today that the Illinois senator offers inspiration in the same way that her father had. “He is already inspiring Americans, young and old, to believe in ourselves,” she said, adding that her three teenage children had been the first in her household to alert her to Obama’s promise..

Another icon in the liberal establishment, prize-winning author Tony Morrison, also endorsed Obama today. Morrison - the African American writer who first dubbed President Clinton “the first black president” - said in a letter that she had admired Hillary Clinton for years, praising her “exhaustive” knowledge and her “expert” negotiation of politics. But Morrison said Obama has a quality that “has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don’t see in other candidate.” that compelled her support.

“In addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something,” Morrison wrote. “That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom.”

Both Obama and Clinton sought an endorsement from Edward Kennedy, who in 46 years in the Senate has become an icon. In addition to his status as a lion of liberal causes, Kennedy also has a vast network of political contacts. Just last October Kennedy was quoted as saying that it would be difficult to choose among the Democratic candidates. “I’ve got a lot of friends who want to be president,” he said.

Kennedy had privately urged former President Clinton to temper his attacks on Obama, and was said to have been chagrined when Bill Clinton compared Obama’s landslide Saturday in South Carolina to civil rights leader Jesse Jackson’s victories there in the 1980s.

Ignoring the hoopla over Kennedy’s endorsement, Hillary Clinton today focused her criticism on President Bush. “Tonight is a red-letter night in American history,” she said. “It is the last time George Bush will give the State of the Union. Next year it will be a Democratic president giving it.”