Fresh off the South Carolina victory for Barack Obama (Dick Polman calls it a “Saturday Night Massacre“) is a flood of endorsements, as catalogued here by the Carpetbagger. Chief among them for my money is Caroline Kennedy’s. She did her work in the New York Times, and here’s an excerpt:

OVER the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.

My reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and the three are intertwined. All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.

Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.

It is too soon to say how much of an impact this is going to have on the Democratic primaries, but it seems to point, as Caroline Kennedy indicates, to a shift in Democrats from the politics of the Clintons to a politics of ideals. I would not be surprised if that shift towards idealism was not caused directly by the politics as practiced by Bill clinton over the last week or two. Democrats in general, I suppose, identify ugly, hard-hitting politics with Republicans, and they are turned off by it. I dare say that Americans in general are becoming more and more resistent to such ugliness, as it is associated with the Bush Administration and Karl Rove. One wonders if Bill Clinton just shutting up will be enough to turn this around for the Clinton camp. That’s what’s up for Bill, a shorter leash, at least according to the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign will try to shift former President Bill Clinton back into the positive, supportive-spouse role that he played before her loss in the Iowa caucuses, Clinton advisers said yesterday.
Yet some of them expressed concern that Bill Clinton’s aggressive campaigning in South Carolina might have already damaged Hillary Clinton and that he might be difficult to rein in.

After a week of all-out campaigning by Bill Clinton in South Carolina, there is fresh concern among some advisers that his visibility has dented his wife’s argument that she has the best experience for the job - leaving voters with the impression that hers would be a copresidency, one that could bring back elements of the Clinton history that many Democrats would just as soon leave behind.

“The president is going to pull back - he’s got to,” said Rep. Charles B. Rangel of New York, a leading supporter of Hillary Clinton.

Bill Clinton has had such a high profile lately that, despite his popularity among Democrats, he has emerged in news-media coverage and among voters as a reminder of the scandals and tumult that weighed on the Clinton partnership in the 1990s.

No, this is not a danger of reminding Democrats of the scandals of the 90’s. Heck, that might even energize some Democrats. It is going to remind them of Republicans and of rank and ugly partisanship, and that won’t be good for the Hillary Clinton campaign one little bit. Contrast the ugliness of Bill Clinton trying to gratuitously trying to paint Obama as “black” with the words of Caroline Kennedy above. Those are two very different world views. Bill’s is closer to the “win without a nod to ethics” approach of Republicans, and that’s what is going to hurt Hillary Clinton more than anything.

But let’s not fool ourselves. Bill Clinton is not the only example of folks in the Clinton campaign playing hardball while on steroids. The LA Times’ Gregory Rodriguez reports that the recent meme about Latinos not supporting African American candidates evidently is not so statistically accurate, but seems to have come from a different Clinton campaign source than Bill. Yeah, Bill’s behavior may be part of a pattern.