TEDDY

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You could hear it in Caroline Kennedy's voice. You could see it in the eyes of an audience that grew up on the larger than life feats and flaws of a first family. The last brother standing at the podium in his last convention delivering another barn burner of a speech, this time endorsing a new candidate for a new generation. He flew to Denver against doctors orders to play his part in history. He reminded the people in the center and millions more watching on television that their was another Democratic family besides the Clinton's that held the heartstrings of a nation. There was another young man with dreams who "asked not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country!"

The video by Ken Burns scraped raw every inch of heart muscle as it showed the aged lion sailing against the wind with his family and then went on to touch as did his niece the history of a legislative giant. It is a history remembered best by John Lewis who lived it at the side of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It is a history resoundingly repeated in the words of the Senator himself as he spoke once more of the right of every American to health care and the opportunity to join the young Senator from Illinois in finally realizing that right.

It was the full throttled endorsement by this Kennedy that woke up a sleeping assembly and began to tie together the disparate branches of a party torn assunder in its primary battle to the death. It is likely in this Democratic year that the Democratic candidate for President will win. But it doesn't take much to turn the electorate the other way. A couple recent good weeks by the Republic has taken the smile off the faces of a lot of the pundits.

And in his last act the giant delivered a speech that looked squarely into the future without remorse or any tinge of self pity. He spoke of his desire to return to the Senate in January and who's to say he can't rise up again and beat the odds and return home to his beloved Capital to help prosecute the delivery of health care to all and as importantly the end of a very bad war.

He ended his speech by paraphrasing his great words from 1980; "The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives on." I heard the speech in 1980. I hear the speech tonight and my heart beats faster for the dream and the tears run steadily down my cheeks.

Teddy was magnificent!