Caroline Kennedy

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In a decision she attributes to "patriotic, political and personal" reasons, former First Daughter Caroline Kennedy is endorsing Barack Obama for president.

In an op-ed in Sunday's New York Times published on the paper's Web site Saturday night, titled "A President Like My Father," Kennedy writes: "It isn't that the other candidates are not experienced or knowledgeable. But this year, that may not be enough. We need a change in the leadership of this country — just as we did in 1960….

"I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans."

Caroline Kennedy's uncle, Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, has not yet endorsed a candidate in the Democratic presidential race. Her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has endorsed Hillary Clinton.

Just minutes before the Illinois senator officially claimed his victory in South Carolina's Democratic presidential primary to an adoring crowd, his campaign publicized what readers of the New York Times will learn in Sunday's edition Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the president whose aura Obama has sought to capture, wants him to win.

She begins her Op-Ed article thusly: "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."

That's music to the ears ...

of the Obama campaign, which from the start of his White House bid has sought to cast him in the role of John F. Kennedy.

That effort received a bit of a boost this summer when the man we described at the time as "the most devout keeper of the assassinated president's legacy, Theodore Sorensen," promoted him as Kennedy's logical heir. But Sorensen, at this point in his long life, is known mainly to historians.

An embrace from Caroline Kennedy -- who a vast swath of the American public has watched grow from a pixieish little girl who brightened the White House to an accomplished middle-aged woman who has weathered the early deaths of her dad and brother -- is quite another matter.

Her piece also contains some backhanded slaps at Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Kennedy extols Obama for "running a dignified and honest campaign." She writes: "And when it comes to judgment, Barack Obama made the right call on the most important issue of our time by opposing the war in Iraq from the beginning."

And then there's this, an assertion that likely will garner the most attention (and surely will cause Bill Clinton to grimace):

"I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans."

Her move will no doubt intensify speculation about whether her uncle, party stalwart Ted Kennedy, will come off the sidelines in the primary race. It was reported earlier this week that he was among the party heavyweights who, in private conversations, urged ex-President Clinton to soften the barbs he's been directing at Obama -- advice that initially, at least, was ignored.