BARACK OBAMA FOR

PRESIDENT!

By Frederick A. Hurst

Well, we have never done a political endorsement before and we may never do it again but this newspaper is endorsing Senator Barack Obama for President of the United Sates. And, though the endorsement comes with a great deal of racial pride, race is not the dominant motivation. No! We are endorsing him for the same reasons Caroline Kennedy endorsed him, and some.

To this day, I recall exactly where I was when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. His assassination was devastating to those of us who harbored hopes that he would change America. The hope was real and palpable. It left grown folks like me pulsating with anticipation that America had passed the crossroads and rejected the path to continued division and embraced the path to meaningful change.

The loss of the dream of Camelot was followed altogether too soon by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and, shortly thereafter, by the assassination of Robert Kennedy. The combined losses left more than a void. They left us with the feeling that it was better not to hope for so much ever again. It made it easier to accept the best that we could get.

And, while we appreciated Bill Clinton for what he was, and more accurately, for what he was not -- Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George Bush, Mitt Romney (well, in anticipation) -- most of us were well aware that he was also no John F. Kennedy. Bill Clinton, with all his warts, was simply the best that we could get under the circumstances.

And even as we clustered around Hillary Clinton, knowing that she, like her husband, simply made us feel good, we remained acutely aware that she left us feeling that we weren’t quite getting a full breath.

And, along came Barack Obama with his message of hope and his promises to bring the race question to heel, to unite us as one America and to renew our stature in the world. Ted Kennedy, in his endorsement of Obama, said it for all of us: “I have marveled at his grit and his grace as he traveled this country and inspired record turnouts of people of all ages, of all races, of all genders, of all parties and faiths to get ‘fired up’ and ‘ready to go.’”

But the impact Barack Obama has had is revealed even more in the words of the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy. She wrote in an Op-Ed article in which she endorsed Obama for President (see opposite page): “Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.”

Barack Obama is that “someone” with the “special ability to get us to believe” again, the first since John F. Kennedy, and we cannot afford to pass up the opportunity to make him our next president. n