Is it too late to get the passion back in politics?

I don't always agree with Joe Klein, but this time I think he has hit the nail on the head! Klein's 'web exclusive' article on Time.com basically says the problem with politics today is consultants. I couldn't agree more!

Klein begins by recounting the night Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, and how presidential candidate Robert Kennedy responded. I was living in Indiana at the time, and remember the speech.

"On the evening of April 4, 1968, about an hour after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy responded with a powerfully simple speech, which he delivered spontaneously in a black neighborhood of Indianapolis. Nearly 40 years later, Kennedy's words stand as an example of the substance and music of politics in its grandest form and highest purpose -- to heal, to educate, to lead. . .

"Kennedy, who was running for the Democratic presidential nomination, had a dangerous job that night. His audience was unaware of King's assassination. He had no police or Secret Service protection. His aides were worried that the crowd would explode as soon as it learned the news; there were already reports of riots in other cities. His speechwriters Adam Walinsky and Frank Mankiewicz had drafted remarks for the occasion, but Kennedy rejected them. He had scribbled a few notes of his own. "Ladies and gentlemen," he began, rather formally, respectfully. "I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening because I have some very sad news ..." His voice caught, and he turned it into a slight cough, a throat clearing, "and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.

"There were screams, wailing -- just the rawest, most visceral sounds of pain that human voices can summon. As the screams died, Kennedy resumed, slowly, pausing frequently, measuring his words: "Martin Luther King ... dedicated his life ... to love ... and to justice between fellow human beings, and he died in the cause of that effort." There was near total silence now. One senses, listening to the tape years later, the audience's trust in the man on the podium, a man who didn't merely feel the crowds pain but shared it. And Kennedy reciprocated: he laid himself bare for them, speaking of the death of his brother -- something he'd never done publicly and rarely privately -- and then he said, "My favorite poem, my favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote, 'Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart,'" he paused, his voice quivering slightly as he caressed every word. The silence had deepened, somehow; the moment was stunning. "'Until ... in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.'"

"Listen to Kennedy's Indianapolis speech and there is a quality of respect for the audience that simply is not present in modern American politics. . ."

There was no violence in Indianapolis that night. The crowd that had gathered to hear Kennedy speak simply went home quietly to reflect on what had happened. The grace with which they handled the tragedy was a testament to all that Dr. King stood for.

One need not romanticize the good-old-days above what they were, but I'd take an honestly delivered speech -- such as the one delivered that night by Robert Kennedy -- over a homogenized 'let's-make-sure-we-use-the-target-words-that-polled-well' speech any day of the week!