Obama Uses JFK's Speechwriter: Echoes of Camelot

Barack Obama has reached into the past for a bit of campaign magic--the ghosts of JFK and Camelot. JFK's speechwriter, Ted Sorenson, is still alive, working to build a new Camelot in Washington.

At the age of 24, he joined the staff of the newly elected Sen. John F. Kennedy and later helped him win the presidency, calling on Americans to pass the torch to a new generation...The legendary speechwriter helped Kennedy craft the now-famous 1961 Inaugural address in which the new president proclaimed, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

...Today, at 79 years old and blind, Sorensen has a new mission: to resurrect Camelot. And it seems the Obama campaign is listening.

"I've given them a phrase or suggestion or two," Sorensen admits...As for all the comparisons that have been drawn between Obama and Kennedy, "I probably started it," he told ABCNEWS.com

ABCNews
This is important. Because if you have read the transcripts of Obama's "Yes We Can" speech, accompanied by the YouTube video, you will get an inkling of the inspirational power of a well written stump speech.

Obama is dipping deeply into the well of inspirational political rhetoric. The rhetoric of JFK's Camelot appears as if by magic--a glorious crystal spring oasis in the midst of the oppressive pessimism created by the mainstream media. What a relief! Obama offers the hope of a wonderful future, divorced from the parched desperation of the present.

If you have not watched the video and read the transcript, you should do so.

Obama induces at least two powerful hopes in the hearts of his listeners:

1. To be understood.
2. To have the hope of a glorious future.

Any politician who can pluck those heart strings will gather a significant following, in terms of numbers.

Obama's speechwriters, including the aging Sorenson, are clearly reaching into more than one historical source, for inspiration. The speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. are likewise being salvaged, for what they may provide in inspiration. And to be sure, Obama is being lifted up as a multitude of icons.

As the weeks and months go by, it will be interesting to count all the icons that one can find, hidden within Obama's speeches, press releases, and fan columns by journalists and celebrities. Because it appears that Obama is to be the recipient of a deluge of decades long, previously continent outbursts of adoration, saved for just the right shining object.

"He is the one," gushes Oprah--a woman who tends to excess from time to time. "He is the truth," Oprah adds, incontinently. Apparently, Obama is to be many things, as time goes on--but particularly he is to be the inspiration for a political movement. Call him a political Messiah.

Ted Sorenson's Messiah, perhaps, returned from the dead? Certainly Oprah's Messiah, and the Messiah of Hollywood's drug saturated, jaded crew.

But is he real? Is there any "there", there? We will see.