Boise News

Convention Coverage: Reporter's Notebook

We’re Still Having Fun, and Kennedy’s Still the One

By Jill Kuraitis, 8-25-08

Inside the Democratic Convention today, the celebrity speeches went on so long that delegates began to look stupefied.  They had cheered so hard, so often and so long since 3:00 p.m. that by the time it was announced that Caroline Kennedy would introduce her uncle, there seemed little hope of rousing an equal energy.

But it happened anyway.  Put JFK’s child in front of a mob of partying Democrats and it’s like giving them a shot of their old hopes and dreams. 

After Caroline spoke of her father and uncle, a video tribute to Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy popped onto the giant screens around the arena, and that thing called a hush took over.

On the darkened stage under the big screen, you had to be looking carefully to notice aides quietly placing a chair behind the lectern so the ailing Kennedy could sit down for his speech.  Would they bring him out in a wheelchair?  It was too tragic to consider, but the whispers started, and so did the tears.

But Teddy Kennedy had no intention of being tragic.  As the video ended and he and his wife walked forward, blooming out of the darkness with his shock of white hair intact and glowing, there was a roar of pride fit for no other living Democrat.

Kennedy used his unique position - a terminally ill man with nothing to lose and everything to leave behind - to toss aside the typical politician’s care not to go too far.  He went all the way, ignoring Hillary and calling for full and urgent support for Obama, passionately likening him to his brothers.

“We are told that Barack Obama believes too much in an America of high principle and high endeavor,” he said. “But when John Kennedy thought of going to the moon he didn’t say, ‘It’s too far to get there, we shouldn’t even try. And today an American flag still marks the surface of the moon.”

“This November, the torch will be passed again to a new generation of Americans,” he said, repeating famous words from President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech. “The work begins anew, the hope rises again and the dream lives on.”

The political poetry that moves any group can sound like political nonsense to those who can’t relate to where it came from. Kennedy’s lofty words, connecting JFK to Obama through themes of hard work, hopes and dreams was poetry to the delegates. 

The roar rose again, and turned into a dance-and-sing along:

You! Are! Still the one—that makes me strong
Still the one—I want to take along
We’re still having fun, and you’re still the one.  You! Are!

I’m the right age to join the deepest sentimentalists about Kennedy.  In elementary school when JFK was assassinated and junior high when Bobby Kennedy was murdered, it was my life’s earliest big lesson.  Like millions of others, my family was scarred by the loss of the Kennedy brothers, and I, for one, have never really shaken the sadness.

Being close to Teddy Kennedy tonight, close enough to feel him rail against injustice as his brothers did, and pledge to be on the Senate floor in January, nearly did me in.  I joined the Idaho delegation and sat where we of middle age understood each other, tried to hold back tears, but finally failed - along with several thousand other people.

Still the one, Teddy.

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