Democratic Senator Barack Obama filled in for ailing Senator Ted Kennedy at Kennedy’s request to give the commencement address to Wesleyan University students — and it sounds as if he filled in for a Kennedy in more ways than one:
Barack Obama, standing in for Senator Edward M. Kennedy as commencement speaker at Wesleyan University, invoked the Kennedy family’s legacy of public service and challenged students to look beyond material gains and work for our “collective salvation.”
“No one is forcing you to care,” Obama said. “You can take your diploma, walk off this stage and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy. But I hope you don’t.”
With a commanding lead in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama said that if he is elected he will call upon the students and the nation to “be unified in service to a greater good. I intend to make it a cause of my presidency.”
Analysts are writing about a demographic split in the Democratic party but it’s now clear there seems to be yet another split. This speech more than ever signals Obama picking up the Kennedy family torch.
There’s now a dividing line between the Kennedy family branch and the Clinton family branch. (See our earlier post HERE.)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.