Was It a Stretch for Obama to Evoke J.F.K.?

In an emotional wallop of a speech at American University in January of 2008, Ted Kennedy not only endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton, but explicitly passed him the mantle of his brother John while 6,000 people cheered, a number of them in tears.

“Now, 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,” Kennedy said that day, not long before he was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. “I remember another such time, in the 1960s, when I came to the Senate at the age of 30. We had a new president who inspired the nation, especially the young, to seek a new frontier…They realized that when they asked what they could do for their country, they could change the world.”