What a beautiful endorsement. Caroline Kennedy, an Icon in this country, has penned a glowing endorsement of Barack Obama on the heels of his huge South Carolina win.
Here is an exerpt:
OVER the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.
My reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and the three are intertwined. All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.
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.
Thank you, Ms. Kennedy for your kind words on behalf of Barack Obama. Head to the link to check out the rest, but this is certainly a huge endorsement likely to carry sway with voters in the Northeast, to say nothing of the rest of the country.
Here is a little bio information (as if you need it) on the great Ms. Kennedy.
Kennedy is an attorney, editor, and writer. She is one of the founders of the Profiles in Courage Award, given annually to a person who exemplifies the type of courage examined in her father's Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name. The award is generally given to elected officials who, acting in accord with their conscience, risk their careers by pursuing a larger vision of the national, state or local interest in opposition to popular opinion or powerful pressures from their constituents. In May 2002, she presented an unprecedented Profiles in Courage Award to representatives of the NYPD, the New York City Fire Department, and the military as representatives of all of the people who acted to save the lives of others during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
Kennedy is currently President of the Kennedy Library Foundation, a Director of both the Commission on Presidential Debates and of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and Honorary Chairman of the American Ballet Theatre. Kennedy is also an adviser to the Harvard Institute of Politics, a living memorial to her father.
In addition, Kennedy has represented her family at the funeral services of former Presidents Ronald Reagan in 2004 and Gerald Ford in 2007, and at the funeral service of former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson in 2007.
Caroline Kennedy also represented her family at the dedication of the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park in Little Rock, Arkansas in November 2004.