Wishing you were here

Friday is the 40th anniversary of Robert Kennedy's death, all the more poignant because it was last night (just days shy of that sad anniversary) that Barack Obama became the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party … the first African-American to come so close to the office Bobby died seeking.

If Bobby had lived to be a white-haired 80-something elder statesman, last night he'd have been very proud of us as a country, the Democrats as a party, and Barack Obama as an orator. A shy man, he was nevertheless a very compelling public speaker who never spoke down to his audiences. On the night Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, it was Bobby who informed the Indianapolis crowd of the tragedy, saying:

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black."

I believe in Heaven so I believe that somehow he did see Barack Obama deliver that speech last night.