1968 was a seminal year in my life and the lives of many others. It was the year I tried hardest to change the political priorities of my country. With the support of my wife, I joined the campaign of Robert F. Kennedy for President. Without invitation I had designed a plan for RFK to capture the delegates of the states that selected its delegates through the convention system. There were 17 of them at that time. Everyone else was working on the primary states. I sent the plan to the RFK Think Tank in DC. I didn’t have a name to send it to; I just sent it to the Think Tank office.
     To my surprise I got a phone call from Mary Jo Kopechne, who worked at the Think Tank. She said that there was a great deal of interest in my plan. She said that John Siegenthaler wants to fly out to Kentucky (where I was a young Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University) and discuss it with me. She added, “Can you meet with him?” I was shaking in my boots. The Deputy Attorney General in charge of Civil Rights in the JFK administration was coming to get my advice? When he walked into my office he had the plan in his hand.
     Mr. Siegenthaler said, “Your plan is excellent.” We didn’t discuss it again. Instead he asked if I would attend the campaign meeting in Indianapolis at which RFK would speak to people he hoped would work for him. I started shaking in my boots again, but I managed to blurt out that I would be there. 
     I was getting carried away by my sense of self-importance.
     I attended, along with 500 others. Bobby was so humble. He said he didn’t have much support—not from labor, not from business, not from much of anyone else—except us. So if we wanted to work for him there wasn’t much competition. He then invited us to stay and talk with each other and with a few staff members. These were the elite supporters, and we all wanted to be among them. I talked with writer David Halberstam, a Pulitzer Prize winning author who had written The Best and the Brightest, a book about the origins of the Vietnam War. I had not read it, but I had read about it and thought it was an important book. David listened more than he spoke. It was like he was writing a book on the RFK campaign workers.  
     Then I met Dick Goodwin, a speechwriter and advisor to both JFK and RFK. He had designed the concept of the Peace Corp under the JFK administration. He was a Harvard Law School graduate and had been a law clerk for Justice Felix Frankfurter. I knew him to be a bold creature of creativity and social justice. He was a man who got into a lot of trouble and got out of it all. He and I hit it off pretty good and maintained a connection for the next 35 years.
     Next I met Susan Sontag, who ended up writing some great articles on Robert Kennedy and the campaign.
     These men and this woman were most impressive to me then and remain so to this day. They exuded excellence.
     There may have been other supporters of equal stature in the room, but this was enough to capture me. I told Mr. Siegenthaler that I wanted to join the campaign in whatever capacity I was needed. He asked me to work in the upcoming Indiana primary—that was where I was needed now. My job was to recruit students from Kentucky to work in Indiana. He told me to report to the campaign office in New  Albany, Indiana, and tell them what I was going to do.
     New Albany is across the Ohio River from Louisville, KY. I traveled to college campuses throughout Kentucky during the week, talked with students, and produced three busloads of students for weekends in New Albany. I was so passionate about the campaign that I paid for the buses out of pocket even though I didn't have the money to spare. I was too busy to bill the campaign for the expense. (Ethel Kennedy later reimbursed me after Bobby was killed.)
     We won the primary and moved on to California. John Siegenthaler was in charge of Northern California. The headquarters were in San Francisco, so that is where I went. I was given a room in a nearby hotel. Students were coming in daily from all over the country. Many of these students used my room as temporary quarters until they were settled in rooms of their own. There was no real training program for us. We just tried what was suggested at the weekly staff meetings.
     My job stayed the same. I was organizing students in San Francisco and in the five surrounding counties for the get-out-the-vote drive on Election Day. The technique was simple. I carried a bag of Robert Kennedy buttons and offered one to everyone I met. If they took one, I pursued a conversation, solicited their help, and took their name and number to relay to the local organization. I convinced other workers from headquarters to go with me on these trips.
     There were many celebrities who helped with special events, but I was not involved in organizing their contributions. However, there was one special series of events I was blessed to be a part of: I traveled with Caesar Chavez, farm worker, labor leader and civil rights activist, as he spoke on the campaign trail. He was on a hunger strike and was weak, but what he said was powerful to the listeners. And it was powerful to me.
     The process on the campuses was repeated for six weeks. Of course, we won the California primary. We were celebrating at a large party when it happened... I was standing next to Ted Kennedy watching the LA victory party on television. When Bobby was shot, Teddy was gone in a flash. I was so stunned I couldn’t even move. Finally I made it back to my hotel room and stared in shock at the television...
     My mother had died a couple of weeks before Bobby Kennedy was killed. I had gone back to Texas and arranged her funeral. Now I went back to Texas to deal with issues of her death that I had put off. There was the house, getting rid of possessions, etc. But persistent in my mind was the question of how I could best carry on the mission that had drawn us all to Bobby’s campaign. Bobby’s commitment made me see that we could get out of Vietnam and concentrate on empowerment of the impoverished.
     I then returned to Kentucky and thought about what I should do. I did not want to let this new mission of mine die. I decided to run for Congress. I had learned the value of broad participation by a large number of people in a campaign. So I started recruiting folks one by one. Many of the folks I recruited did the same. I asked for support--their work, and their money. I asked them to contribute $20 a month for 18 months. I don’t remember anyone turning me down. Many just wrote a check for the whole amount. I was astounded by how many people were ready to join the effort.
     We had 18 months to work on the challenge. We worked, but did not win.      
     The Robert Kennedy campaign of 1968 was one of the most important experiences in my life. I found the right place for my passion. I learned something about what Aristotle called the ‘art of the possible.’ I learned how possibilities can quickly appear and just as quickly disappear.
I think that is what so many young people are learning in the Barack Obama campaign. Obama’s campaign is much better organized than the RFK campaign. He had an organization in place in every state before the first primary. The Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that Obama was first to use the Web as a campaign tool. McCain tried to follow, probably too little too late.
     Obama’s online network of registered users is more than five times larger than McCain’s. Obama’s sites attract three times as many unique users each week as McCain’s. The internet and young people’s skills in using it are providing opportunities that we never dreamed of in 1968. In the RFK campaign we spoke one on one and used the media. Through the internet the Obama campaign speaks to millions simultaneously.
The websites of the Obama campaign are first rate. Pew has been analyzing the site traffic for the Obama sites and the McCain sites. Obama gets 72 percent of the total traffic.
     The Obama campaign has raised more money using the internet than anyone ever. Their follow-up email system to site visitors is professional and rapid. They designed a real role for those who offer to help. They recruit and train people to become Deputy Field Organizers. You can’t just take the training. You have to apply to be accepted. At the recent Camp Obama in Chicago they had 1200 applicants for 350 positions for the four-day intensive training.
     They broke the country into regions so that there was a training application process for everyone. Harvard’s Marshall Ganz, formerly an organizer for Caesar Chavez, leads many of these trainings at Camp Obama. Some states like California, New York, Ohio, Massachusettes, Illinois, to name a few, have their own Camp Obama.
Hans Reimer, national youth vote director for the Obama campaign describes it this way: “We are teaching them, teaching them how to be effective, showing them what their role is in our strategy to win the election… We’re taking people from raw enthusiasm to capable organizers.” Take a look at the Camp Obama site. 
     The Obama campaign has not only raised the internet to new heights as a campaign tool, they have raised small donations to new heights as well. They built on the work of Edward Dean who made use of the power of the internet in his political campaign. Obama has made it easy to contribute small amounts. He is now raising five million every few days on the internet.
     I can only hope that participation in those programs and in this campaign brings to the participants what I enjoyed in the Kennedy campaign: learning experiences for these young and passionate individuals that will impact them as long as they live.