Elmer Smith: Is Barack Obama the new JFK?

IT'S THE most important political endorsement since the era when childless Roman emperors used to adopt their successors.

Sen. Barack Obama may not get to line up with the family for the next touch-football game at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. But he has the next best thing: the Kennedy endorsement.

I do mean THE Kennedy endorsement. I'm not talking about Caroline Kennedy's heartfelt choice or even the substantial support Obama got yesterday from Sen. Ted Kennedy, the shaggy icon of liberal politics in America.

What he really got yesterday was the most-coveted nod any Democrat could hope to score: the implied approval of martyred President John F. Kennedy.

That's what JFK's daughter Caroline was trying to tell us in that fascinaing commentary in the New York Times. It's what the remaining JFK brother, Ted Kennedy, was talkng about when he pledged his support to Obama in Washington yesterday.

They were telling us that, if JFK were alive today, this is the candidate he'd support.

"Over the years," Caroline Kennedy wrote in her op-ed piece Sunday, "I've been deeply moved by the people who've told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president."

Ted Kennedy, who has always been reluctant to invoke JFK's name in his endorsement of candidates, came very close to doing so yesterday, when he shared a stage with Obama at American University.

"There was a time when another young candidate was running for president and challenged America to cross a new frontier," he said, in the most evocative imagery of his speech supporting Obama.

Joined on stage by his son, U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, and his niece Caroline, Ted Kennedy's nod was tantamount to affixing the family seal. Some Clinton aides were quick to point out that former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the daughter of the late Sen. Bobby Kennedy, as well as her brother Bobby and sister Kerry, are all for Hillary.

But Obama got the pledge of support from the only Kennedy who has worked closely with both Obama and Hillary Clinton. Ted Kennedy threw his considerable weight behind John Kerry in 2004, which gave Kerry the labor support that had eluded him.

Obama has lagged well behind Clinton in labor support. She has been the consistent choice of committed Democrats, up to now. Ted Kennedy's pledge to campaign for Obama should help erase that deficit.

But Caroline Kennedy's nod may prove to be even more valuable. On its face it is moving but apparently weightless. She has never been an important factor in anyone's election.

She is too young to remember her father's presidency or, frankly, to remember very much about her father at all.

But she represents voters who are drawn to Obama because of his idealism or, more precisely, because of theirs. And she is not tainted by association with the liberal politics of the past.

"I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them," she wrote in her New York Times piece.

"But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president - not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans."

He's been anointed with Oprah's oil and crowned, like Pepsi, as the choice of a new generation.

But this one-two combination could prove to be the most important milestone along Obama's path to the presidency - if he gets there.

He has the lion of liberal politics drawing traditional Democratic constituencies who have been reluctant to embrace the new kid on the block.

He has the princess of Camelot appealing to the disaffected independents and young people who too often have opted to sit it out rather than choose a partner at Democratic dances.

And they make him sound like the answer to a question that I haven't heard anyone ask in years:

What would JFK do, if he were here? *

Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http://go.philly.com/smith