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"As a survivor of RFK's 1968 campaign," historian Arthur Schlesinger told me, "I see John Kerry in the JFK/RFK tradition -- a brave, intelligent, and thoughtful man. I find many similarities between that campaign and this one, especially our entanglement in a hopeless war at the expense of urgent domestic woes."

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RFK's influence can also be seen in Kerry's willingness to dream big. His campaign speeches often consciously evoke Bobby's famous challenge to dream of things that never were and ask, “Why not?”: "Why not give every working American access to high-quality, affordable health care? Why not have public schools where children set out on a lifetime of learning and possibility? Why not preserve our environment so our great-grandchildren can breathe clean air and drink clean water? Why not have a leadership committed to civil rights, equal rights, and affirmative action? And why not have a foreign policy that strengthens our nation and our interests by advancing our values?"

The hallmark of Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign was the urgency he brought to the problems of race and poverty. And as Douglas Brinkley wrote in "Tour of Duty": "Like Robert F. Kennedy, for a young white man of privileged background, Kerry always displayed an uncommonly incongruous instinct for siding with the underdog."

Speaking this week in Topeka, Kansas on the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's landmark Brown school desegregation ruling, John Kerry echoed Kennedy's concerns:

"We have not met the promise of Brown when one-third of all African-American children are living in poverty. We have not met the promise of Brown when only fifty percent of African-American men in New York City have a job. We have not met the promise of Brown when nearly twenty million black and Hispanic Americans don't have basic health insurance. And we certainly have not met the promise of Brown when, in too many parts of our country, our school systems are not separate but equal - but they are separate and unequal… For America to be America for any of us, America must be America for all of us."