In the twilight hours of a West Coast dawn, anticipating the penultimate moments of a long and sometimes insufferable primary season, I find my thoughts turning now toward Denver and the consummation of our compact between the new wave of Democrats and the old party of The New Deal. It inspires almost giddy thoughts in this old man, yet there is one piece of unfinished business which I earnestly hope will not be overlooked during that fateful week in August.
This convention must take note, as the torch is passed to a new generation, of its old lions now in Winter, while they still battle beside us. It is just and right so to do.
The roster of these lions is lengthy, the names familiar: Kennedy, Carter, Byrd, Mondale, Dingell, etc. They have fought long and well for our cause. Sometimes they have fought each other. But, always, in the end, they have acquitted themselves as patriots, and they have ennobled our Party and our Nation.
Robert Byrd stands as an example of an uniquely American story of transcendent personal growth in a public arena. This man who began his career sixty years ago as a klansman in the hills of West Virginia arrives at Denver as the President Pro Tempore and Dean of the Senate, an acknowledged authority on its byzantine rules and the Constitution's fiercest advocate, and an Obama delegate! He, like our nominee, was one of the handful of public servants with the courage to say NO to the Iraqi War, and as the fire of his spirit ebbs away with the strain of the years, it seems fitting that he should be honored for the moral courage he has displayed over a lifetime which bridges Roosevelt and Obama.
Then there is Jimmy Carter! I must admit that I love Jimmy Carter, yet I cannot quote a single one of his speeches, nor can I point to a single plank of any one of his many detailed plans which particularly captured my imagination or moved me to great achievement. I love Jimmy Carter because he is everything I wish I could be -- genuine, unpretentious, brave, straightforward, pious but not preachy. He may well be the only real Christian I have ever met in my lifetime, a man for whom the convictions of his faith proceed organically from his soul and radiate out in tiny but tangible things like literally building houses for the working poor or personally defying thugs intimidating first-time voters at some remote polling station in Africa. This is a man who sought to allay public fears by walking with his beloved wife into the reactor containment building at Three-Mile Island, who never asked anything from us that he would not do himself. Like most Americans, sometimes Jimmy Carter made me proud and sometimes he made me angry, but I love him and trust him. And he arrives in Denver as an Obama delegate.
Which brings us to Ted Kennedy. His brothers Jack and Bobby were magic to people like me. There is no escaping the influence these two men had on the course of American history, nor is there any use denying their great personal magnetism and charisma. Yet, for all their many accomplishments in civil rights and social justice, the advancement of science and education, their influence on the lives of most Americans is tiny in comparison to that of their youngest brother Ted. In a career spanning half a century, Ted Kennedy has placed his fingerprint on every major piece of legislation affecting labor, health care, education, the judiciary and tax reform. But, passing almost unnoticed in the sheer volume and tenure of his service to the nation is the undeniable fact that he was one of the greatest orators of the twentieth century, surpassing his elder brother John and rivaling Churchill. His eulogy to his fallen brother Robert inspires us as much today as when it was first spoken forty years ago. Indeed, Ted Kennedy inspires me as much today as he did forty years ago, and the dignity with which he has endured so many personal tragedies, forgoing a privileged life of leisure for the duty of public service, never fails to shame me out from the complacency of my bourgeois self-indulgence. Along with Jimmy Carter, and somewhat paradoxically, given their history together, I love Ted Kennedy and wish to tell him so while there is yet time and opportunity. It seems appropriate to do so when he arrives in Denver as an Obama delegate.
So that is what I'm dreaming about for the Colorado Rocky Mountain high. It will be, of course, exciting to see the rebirth of the Democratic party and the beginning of the Obama era. It is something which many of us have waited over forty years to see. But, just to wrap things up and to give credit where it is due, I hope to see a few minutes spared for those old lions. And I would like to see Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy shake hands, perhaps twenty years delayed, but never too late.
Byrd, Carter and Kennedy -- three distinct faces of the old Democratic party coming together once again as Obama delegates! The vision is almost seraphic, and it is coming to Denver in August.