For Obama, Reading Up on RFK

ST. ANDREWS, SCOTLAND -- Buried within two foreign papers' Iowa coverage of Hillary Clinton is an interesting note about the reading selection of Senator Barack Obama.

From the Mail & Guardian:

As she flew into Iowa, the man who might yet top her was slumped asleep in economy class on a flight from Washington to Chicago, travelling home after a week in the Senate. By Obama's side was a biography of a Democrat with the same ability to rouse crowds with passionate speeches, Robert Kennedy.

The Times of London also picked up this detail, noting the book sat "unopened" the entire flight (because people want to know if he can sleep and read at the same time). However, they did not specify which biography of the youthful first-term Senator from New York that the youthful first-term Senator from Illinois is sporting.

If popularity and the National Book Award are any indicators, it was likely Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s Robert Kennedy and His Times. Not a bad choice for someone seriously considering, if not already decided on, running for the presidency in 2008. It's also one of my favorite books.

In fact, as someone pretty familiar with Robert Kennedy, I'd like to offer a suggestion to Senator Obama. Given some of the things you have in common with Kennedy -- namely, the surging crowds that flock to your every appearance -- I'd like for you to take note of this passage in chapter 40, with special emphasis on the last sentence.

Richard Harwood of the Washington Post and other newspapermen began to change their minds about the clamorous crowds. Maybe there was something more to it than demagoguery. "We discovered in 1968," Harwood said later, "this deep, almost mystical bond that existed between Robert Kennedy and the Other America. It was a disquieting experience for reporters.... We were forced to recognize in Watts and Gary and Chimney Rock [Nebraska] that the real stake in the American electoral process involved not the fate of speech-writers and fund-raisers but the lives of millions of people seeking hope out of despair."

When Robert Kennedy was on the stump, his words -- though beautiful -- were not what attracted people to him. It was a deep, passionate connection that the best rhetoric cannot fake. It was real.

In 1968, Harwood was a tough former Marine and seasoned journalist. He had heard Kennedy's stump speech hundreds of times, yet even he could not remain cynical toward the very real connections Kennedy made with his audiences. Harwood was even planning for a transfer as he could no longer consider himself objective, but then Kennedy was assassinated. Afterwards, he collected a poster: a drawing of Kennedy around which friends and staffers quoted and memorialized the slain candidate. Harwood later gave it to a friend, as he didn't want to be reminded of how he came to care so much for a subject.

Senator Obama, understand that the crowds did not feed off of Robert Kennedy -- it was the other way around. Another reporter in the Kennedy pool, Jules Witcover, noted in his excellent chronicle of the '68 campaign, 85 Days, that Kennedy needed those mobs of admirers to sustain him. Perhaps it's a natural reaction to riding high on filled-to-capacity events, with every day spent wondering when the people will stop coming. But if what Harwood and others observed is true, Kennedy needed to see his supporters' faces and to touch their hands. To him, that connection was more important than any speech, or any typical political hurdle by which we measure campaigns today.

Like me, a lot of people still don't know much about Senator Obama, or if he's the real thing. Some like to compare him to Robert Kennedy for the emotions and the idealism that he is so good at stirring. But there's more to it than that, as Senator Obama is surely reading -- at least once he catches up on his sleep.

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