So Barack Obama will be fillling in for the ailing Sen. Ted Kennedy today, delivering the commencement address at my alma mater, Wesleyan University. It’s a nice gesture by Obama, and doubtless a boon for the oft-misidentified Little Three school in Middletown, Connecticut.

The graduating seniors must be excited, as they gather ‘round the dear old banner emblazoned with the red and black. The perennial goal of Wesleyan’s admissions office seems to be to assemble a group of young people who believe that they are the change they’ve been waiting for. So expect a warm reception for the Democratic frontrunner, to put it mildly. I rather expect it to sound like Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show.

And I’m sure it will be a strirring speech. Rather better than my own commencement address (oh so many years ago) by Desmond Tutu, which was little more than a series of call-and-responses of “Amandla! / Awethu!” [I recall the New York Times at the time complaining that Tutu failed to discuss the troubling incidents on campus that year — numerous examples of racist graffiti, the firebombing of the president’s office — all of them, it’s since become clear, perpetrated by African-American students. “By any means necessary,” right?]

Whether Obama’s speech has any actual substance over Tutu’s spare “power to the people” remains to be seen.