Greatness is never defeated, not even in death.  

If you weren’t alive on November 22, 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was shot, or April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, or around when Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy was felled by an assassin’s bullet shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, dying June 6, you’re psyche isn’t seared with the pain of the loss of those three great men who held in their being the promise for a great America.

History books abound with the story of the interrupted promise of these men’s lives. If you were alive, the deaths of the two Kennedy brothers and of Reverend King are tales you probably have told your children and grandchildren with the voice of reverence to greatness, and, more importantly, the abject sadness for what it might have meant for America had these men lived to see their dreams fulfilled. Sadly, our children never knew that greatness, and that has been their loss.

Americans who witnessed the enormity of these men’s lives were never the same after their tragic deaths. Americans were sad, angry, some became apathetic.  Each American had their way of dealing with the collective pain. But as children will do when they lose a parent, America has been searching for - pining for - that figure in history to replace her loss. To date, America never  found that someone but continues the search in the hope that one day a great leader will come along who will save America from herself, and help to realize the promise that is hers.

So, it is no surprise that when a man like Barack Obama comes before America with all his talk of dreams, hopes and unity, who speaks of the “Us” and not the "I," who promises America a better tomorrow, that so many latch onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, he is the someone who will help us realize our best.

The sad truth  is that Obama is neither a Kennedy nor a King. His slogan of change is just that, a meaningless campaign slogan. His speeches are nothing more than stolen words from the greats of our nation. The Kennedys and the Reverend King were men of original thought and idea; they were groundbreakers. This man is not.

“Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country,” President Kennedy demanded all Americans. In June 1966, when Bobby Kennedy gave a speech to apartheid ruled South Africa he spoke the words that appear on his gravestone at Arlington National Cemetery: “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope…”Martin Luther King, Jr. was more than a great orator, which is what Senator Obama is, "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” cried Dr. King.

From Barack Obama on the night of his Iowa win in his much lauded speech with its retooled Kennedy line, “I’m asking you to believe not just in the ability to bring about real change in Washington, I’m asking you to believe in yours,” also came these memorable words: “Let’s give it up for Michelle Obama!”

And so America keeps on waiting for that next truly great man to come along; a man with more than a message of vague hope or the tired promise of change.  But rather a man of great ideas, a man of extraordinary ideals, a man willing to get down in the trenches and do the hard work necessary to make America the best that she can be.

Oh, but wouldn’t it be extraordinary if that man turned out to be a woman, maybe even a woman man enough to cry? Maybe even a wrinkled woman with cleavage, over 50 years old. I think men like Bobby, Martin, and John would find such a woman evidence that we are, indeed, all created as equals.

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