A REAL Presidential Library

For the last ten years, a small group of rare book experts has sought to re-create Thomas Jefferson's library... which was the foundation for the Library of Congress, although two-thirds of the volumes were lost in a fire in 1851.

Tomorrow the recollected library, over 6,000 volumes of originals and replacements, will go on display at the LOC looking much as it would have 200 years ago.

"The leather-bound tomes on topics as varied as whist, beekeeping and philosophy were... brought to Monticello to help fulfill Jefferson's vow to amass the whole of human knowledge."

This accumulated knowledge attest to Jefferson's thirst for knowledge, and support the toast President John Kennedy made at a dinner he hosted for Nobel Prize winners in 1962 where he observed, "Never has there been so much collective intelligence in this room, since Jefferson dined here alone."

Caroline Chooses Obama

Who of us who lived through the John F. Kennedy presidency can forget the special relationship he had with his children. We can picture them playing under his desk in the Oval Office, or showing up there in Halloween costumes much to Kennedy's delight.

So what endorsement could be more powerful than this.... "A President Like My Father".... (NY Times) made by daughter Caroline, advocating for the nomination of presidential candidate Barack Obama.

There are the expected political endorsements from other pols and news organizations.... shrugged off by many voters as politics as usual.... but rarely an endorsement that breaks that jaded mold, to forcefully bring home the possibility of reconnecting with our better selves, to "feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president."

There is no denying that the country is dispirited, overwhelmed by the monstrous failures of the Bush administration on every front. Caroline reasons that all of the candidates goals to right the country's course are similar.... "So qualities of leadership, character and judgment play a larger role than usual."

She powerfully articulates that she sees in Obama an eloquent candidate with intregrity who can inspire the way people told her that her father inspired.... "I believe I have found the man who could be that president - not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans."

Nothing could be further from this heartfelt hope than what we've all witnessed with the reemergence of the Billary road act.... unprincipled, fact-challenged and divisive. Bill Clinton's undignified red-faced eruptions and Hillary's hollow "35 years of experience" and slick evasiveness leave inspiration stillborn.

But, should the Democratic electorate be so self-destructive as to nominate Hillary, as Frank Rich points out today, it'll be "The Billary Road to Republican Victory." (NY Times)

Rich points out that if "Obama doesn't fight, no one else will. Few national Democratic leaders have the courage to stand up to the Clintons."

Big choices lie ahead for Democrats with the Super Tuesday primaries on February 5.... voters can choose the Clinton rancid politics of the past, or on Obama who embodies hope for the American dream and in the American ideal for peoples everywhere.