JFK speechwriter, Sorenson, endorses Obama

[illinoisprogressive]

Ted Sorensen, the speechwriter and special counsel to President John F. Kennedy endorsed Senator Barack Obama tonight and compared Obama’s campaign to Kennedy’s run almost half a century earlier.

“The campaigns are comparable,” Sorenson said in an interview after his speech, which was delivered to a closed $1,000-a-head fundraiser at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, and which left guests buzzing over what several said was an implied comparison to Kennedy. “They say he’s too young, he’s too inexperienced, his demographic is wrong to get elected. They’ve decided in Washington that he doesn’t have a chance. But the campaign isn’t going on in Washington. The campaign is going on in the grassroots.”

Sorenson also sharply rebuked legislators who voted to authorize the Iraq war, a group that includes Senator Hillary Clinton and former Senator John Edwards.

“Members of either party who authorized this disaster should be accountable,” Sorenson said. “ didn’t have to vote for it, and moderate his position, and come up with an alternate strategy . He didn’t have to come up non-binding resolutions and so forth.”
Sorenson suggested a campaign slogan: “Obama: Right from the start.”

The Kennedy speechwriter does not always become involved in Democratic primary politics, though he helped Wesley Clark briefly in 2004. He said he couldn’t recall throwing himself this thoroughly behind a campaign since Gary Hart’s 1984 run.

He stopped short of comparing Obama personally to the 35th president.

“We won’t really know the answer to that question until Obama is president and faced with governing,” he said. “His judgment will be tested on the campaign, but not the way it will be tested in the White House.”

[H2O Man]

1. Interesting.

Ted Sorenson is a smart man. I think this is an impressive thing for Obama.

[never cry wolf]

2. Do you have a link?

I'd like to read the whole article.

[snowbear]

3. Here's one..

> http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0307/Sorenson_Endorses_Obama_Conjures_Kennedy_Jabs_Clinton.html

And this one (also from tonight) is great. Michell Obama talks about Senator Obama and how he doesn't put his socks in the laundry and doesn't make the bed.. http://www.wqad.com/Global/story.asp?S=6207253

[never cry wolf]

4. Thanks, a google on Sorensen + Obama produced some results

And yet I cheer his announcement that he might announce he is going to announce -- something like that. I say this not just because I have been following his career out of the corner of my eye -- my, my, ain't he a natural! -- but because I've actually been reading his speeches. The one he gave on the role of religion in politics was as smart a speech as I've ever read. It's the sort of thing John F. Kennedy could have given, only his would have been written by someone else, probably Ted Sorensen.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/23/AR2006102301033.html

“It’s too early to say,” he says, picking delicately at his fries. “Right now, there is a pack of 15 or so . I know many of them. I admire almost all of them. Any one of them would be a vast improvement over what we have today.”

Sorensen refuses to name names. But the night before, he had met Barack Obama, the young, black senator for Illinois who is considering a presidential bid in 2008. Sorensen “was favourably impressed”. “What they said about Kennedy, that he was too young and inexperienced, that is exactly what they say about Obama today.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0b1d3564-8040-11db-9096-0000779e2340.html