I had lunch with my old friend David Talbot last week. He was my boss at Salon and my editor at a number of places before then. Last year David published an illuminating book about JFK & RFK, Brothers:The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, which championed Bobby as one of the first of his brother’s assassination conspiracy theorists. Before he himself was assassinated under shadowy circumstances.

We talked of Obama. I had just seen his speech on race and David, who has the same hopes for the candidate that I do (a president we can finally believe in again) said, “He needs a Bobby.” The younger Kennedy was the guy who could do the street fighting while his older sibling played statesman and kept his campaingn, for the most part, on a higher plane. When the Clintons, or whomever, sling mud and Obama retaliates, the press and his detractors react by saying, “Ah, he’s just like them! Politics as usual after all.”

I thought of David’s words this afternoon as I watched the latest bit of Clinton mud fly. It was Bill, Hillary’s own personal Bobby, getting his hands dirty again as he addressed a veterans group in North Carolina. “I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country,” said the former president. “And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics.”

Gee, what stuff could that be? And I wonder which two candidates he means?

Rather than let the candidate himself respond, retired Air Force Genreral Tony McPeak flung the dirt back. “I grew up, I was going to college when Joe McCarthy was accusing good Americans of being traitors, so I’ve had enough of it,” McPeak said. The Clintons of course screamed outrage (Uncle Joe is Satan for members of the old left, though a lot of Obama’s younger supporters might be hard pressed to tell you who he was) but what I thought was most interesting was seeing Obama, standing on the stage with his arms folded, while McPeak took his wacks. Maybe instead of one Bobby, Obama will find a chorus of them. Critics of the critics, fighting the armies of the night.

Sure, Obama looked a little awkward letting someone else fight his battle for him. But as Bill Richardson said, standing with the senator at another rally when he endorsed the “once in a lifetime” candidate, his speech Tuesday contained “the eloquence, sincerity and optimism we have come to expect of him.” It’s hard to handle all that and a switchblade, too.