Yaicha

David Brooks’ column in the NYT, “The Kennedy Mystique,” gives more detail than I had seen reported elsewhere about the three Kennedys’ Obama endorsement announcement on Monday. In particular, he explains the subtleties in Senator Ted Kennedy’s speech.

“With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion,” Senator Kennedy declared. “With Barack Obama, there is a new national leader who has given America a different kind of campaign — a campaign not just about himself, but about all of us,” he said.

I like Brooks’ following comment on that:

The Clintons started this fight, and in his grand and graceful way, Kennedy returned the volley with added speed.

And this is my favorite part, something not mentioned anywhere else in the coverage I saw:

Then, in the speech’s most striking passage, he set Bill Clinton afloat on the receding tide of memory. “There was another time,” Kennedy said, “when another young candidate was running for president and challenging America to cross a New Frontier.” But, he continued, another former Democratic president, Harry Truman, said he should have patience. He said he lacked experience. John Kennedy replied: “The world is changing. The old ways will not do!”

Brooks goes on to analyze the generational dynamics that were at play, and it’s good reading. Here’s just one of the points he makes:

How could the septuagenarian Kennedy cast the younger Clintons into the past? He could do it because he evoked the New Frontier, which again seems fresh. He could do it because he himself has come to live a life of service.

So, I recommend reading the column. And I’ll close with Brooks’ closing:

It’s not clear how far this altered public mood will carry Obama in this election. But there was something important and memorable about the way the 75-year-old Kennedy communed and bonded with a rapturous crowd half a century his junior.

The old guy stole the show.