Let me finish with something about the revelation up at St. Anthony’s this Saturday.
Kathleen and I were back in the church when President Obama made that remarkable profession of love for his vice president and his family.
If you think this is normal in American politics these days, let me break it to you — “Love” isn’t the word you hear, isn’t the bond your notice. No, it’s not even familiar to those of us who cover the political world of this early century, isn’t the world around you when you get into politics as so many of you who watch each night.
Look, if this is too gooey for you, okay. I’m not going to give this commentary very often.
But attention needs to be paid to the close relationship we saw in that little Italian church on Saturday. People need to realize what was revealed up there on the altar when a President of the United States not only admitted an affection for his Vice President, but celebrated it for all to witness.
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He did in his eulogy to the Vice President’s son. He did it not because of the tragedy, but because, he said, of the love that binds them and, beyond that, their two families.
I am a romantic about politics, as most of you know now. I love stories of the Kennedys and Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and Charles DeGaulle and, yes, I got a thrill from those early speeches of Barack Obama. But nothing in that was as human as what we witnessed this weekend. And I say, “Good for them.” Good for them that they don’t mind us knowing that two people who work together day after day, through successful missions and mistakes (and yes, gaffes!) have found in their work and struggle at the top the most sublime of human emotions and the most basic. That was a nice little neighborhood up there in Wilmington where that funeral took place and Barack Obama and Joe Biden could have been just two guys from the same block who’d shared the joys and pangs and punishment of life together…like good human beings. Don’t you think?
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