The three candidates for president provided an illuminating contrast with their very different observance of the 40^th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King on Friday. Barack Obama addressed a campaign rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana, offering a vague, detail-free but soaring promise to complete King’s dream by addressing persistent poverty and economic inequality. Hillary Clinton summoned tears to recall her personal reaction as a college junior forty years ago – throwing her book bag across her dorm room and feeling her whole world was shattered. John McCain went to the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, the civil rights museum on the site where King was actually shot, and expressed his regret for voting against the national King holiday when Congress first considered it in the ‘80’s. He received a smattering of boos and catcalls from the all-black crowd, but also audible shouts of “we forgive you” and “everybody makes mistakes.” After his remarks, Senator McCain – who refuses Secret Service protection – plunged into the once hostile crowd, in the rain, and spent considerable time hugging and greeting its members. In short, Obama provided a stage-managed, effective, but meaningless media event, Clinton embarrassed herself with a narcissistic and oddly self-pitying recollection, and McCain showed why some of us believe that he is a most unusual and intriguing candidate. He knew he wasn’t going to get any votes from a talk to an African-American crowd in Memphis. Of course, most of those who heard him – however moved they seemed to be – will vote for Obama, McCain’s likely rival, in the fall. Nor does John McCain need extra votes in Memphis to carry Tennessee, which looks like  reliably Republican state in November. Nonetheless, McCain made himself look presidential – delivering bracing straight talk about an unhealed national wound in a high risk and low benefit insertion in his schedule. Typically, disappointingly, the media only featured the headline that he acknowledged his mistake in first opposing the holiday, but gave little attention to the substance of the fine speech about the meaning of Dr. King’s work. Aside from the falling barriers of race and gender on the Democratic side, Senator McCain is making his own efforts to make this campaign different, and better, than our other recent electoral contests.