Today marks the 40th anniversary of the death of former Attorney General and U.S. Sen. Robert Francis Kennedy, D-N.Y., after he finished giving a victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after the 1968 California primary.

Over the last several months the specter of Robert Kennedy has been raised on many occasions from references to his energy (often by those who have seen the young people of the country register and vote in large numbers because of the candidates who ran this year) to his assassination (most foolishly by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton two weeks ago) during a bitter campaign.

Why would someone who never was president and died four decades ago still be such a fixture in American politics? The simple reason is that Robert Kennedy matters when it comes to politics and, more importantly, the idealism that he generated.

While many Americans recall the spirit that came to the front through his older brother, especially with his 1961 inauguration, for many in politics it is the intensity of Robert Kennedy many more identify with. But his role in Americana is more than magazine monographs and pictorials or in a legion of anniversary biographies on sale in bookstores.

For many his coming out against Lyndon Johnson, the war in Vietnam and/or talking about poverty in America, was enough to get them energized. For others it may have been to see the will of a man, devastated by the personal loss in Dallas five years earlier, who hauled himself out of sorrow to fight a fight that he clearly knew could have ended with death.

For others, it may have been his use of language to say what needed to be said. When he was told by advisors that it was unsafe to address a crowd, in Indianapolis, that did not know yet of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Kennedy knew something needed to be said. He told the crowd that King had just died and of his own experience with assassination and asked them to “ ... dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of the world.” That night, while many American cities burned with riots, Indianapolis did not.

But if there is one reason why Bobby Kennedy matters now, it was because he asked us to look to our better selves. He paraphrased George Bernard Shaw with “Some men see things as they are and ask, ‘Why'? I dream of things that never were and ask, ‘Why not'?” That is the essence of America and its idealism - an idealism that could not be killed by a handgun in a hotel kitchen and will be remembered for decades to come.

Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn and can be contacted at cozguytho@aol.com