I've now watched "The Speech" four times. All four times my eyes welled up at the story of Ashley and the elderly Black gentleman. I have spent the better part of the day trying to understand why. Now, I think I know. Memory is a tricky thing.
Portions of the following are rewritten from a letter I wrote at Salon right before Super Tuesday.
I fell in love with politics during the summer of 1960, because my father invited me to watch both the Republican and the Democratic conventions on TV. I was nine years old. I remember jaunty Nelson Rockefeller, whom my dad described as a "good" Republican, and the patrician Henry Cabot Lodge, whom he felt was "reasonable." I also got a look at Richard Nixon. I don't believe my father had to say a word for me to distrust that man. I already knew I was for the Democrat by the time that convention ended.
Then came the Democrats. I saw JFK and it was all over. I didn't care that my dad thought he was too young, and he was a Catholic (although that objection was tactical. My father was a minister in the Christian Church, and he was completely ecumenical in outlook). He preferred Adlai Stevenson, although he told me Adlai's time had come and gone. A lifetime later, after my father died, I found the famous photograph of Adlai Stevenson's worn out shoe in one of his Bibles.
I watched the famous debates. I didn't really get the point of what was said, but I knew JFK won.
We all went to bed on election night not knowing who had won, but when I woke up the next day, it was a new world. It was as though the sky was bluer, and the air was lighter. The next three years were a blur of change. The world sped up.
I was only 18 miles away when JFK was killed, and I thought I'd never get over the shock or the grief.
I was thirteen years old. I have a nearly photographic memory of that day. We kids were angry we hadn't been let out of school to see the President in Dallas. In those days Presidents didn't run all over the country, and it seemed like the only chance I would ever get to see JFK in person. When the principal's voice came over the intercom with the terrible news, I didn't quite comprehend it, but it was really scary that the teacher was crying at her desk.
Then came the Beatles. The summer of love. The war. The draft. Woodstock. A High lottery number. The Stones. Altamont. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Mama Cass die of excess. Rockstar dream fails. Marriage. Middle class normal life. 1980....
Reagan. Carter. Bush. Clinton. Monica. Y2K. Bush. War again. No Beatles. No JFK....
When I read Ted Sorensen's op-ed in TNR that compared Obama with JFK, I began to see the similarity. That's when I realized, as a baby-boomer, I have always had one great subliminal regret. I had always thought it was that JFK, RFK and MLK all got murdered, but I was wrong. I hadn't wanted to face that I, and my generation had failed to fully act upon the idealism we brought to the 1960s and beyond. In the end, it was easier to blame it all on Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray. But, it was us who failed; us who lost focus, got complacent and forgot our commitment to the clarion ideals the Democratic Party used to express.
When Obama won Iowa (and I'm proud to have played a tiny part in that) I began to feel that my boomer generation might yet be redeemed. The hope that Obama loves to talk about is specifically for me, for us. We have a second chance.
New Hampshire, Super Tuesday. 11 in a row. Texas, Ohio, Wyoming. Mississippi. Ferraro, Wright. The politics of shame.
The Speech....
So, when I heard the story of nine-year-old Ashley eating mustard and relish sandwiches, and the elderly Black gentleman who believed in her even more than he believed in Barack, I cried. I cried for the fact that at nine years old I fell in love with politics. I cried for the death of my generation's three most important leaders. I cried for the death of idealism and the birth of the "me generation."
But, the fourth time through the speech I remembered Ted Sorensen's endorsement, and that I had written an impassioned letter to people reading Salon on the eve of Super Tuesday, asking them to help reclaim the idealism my generation had let go of, and to believe, as I do, that Obama is the true heir to JFK.
And, I realized that I was crying tears of joy at the beauty of Barack Obama's language, the profundity of his thinking, and the miracle of his candidacy, that has restored my own hope and idealism.
Addendum:
Thank you everyone who commented. I'm glad some folks found this worthwhile! And, I did tell my father how I felt about him before he died. I recommend it highly.