Mrs. Caroline Kennedy, daughter of former President John F. Kennedy, will endorse U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) with an op-ed in tomorrow morning’s New York Times. Kennedy says that her decision to endorse Obama is “patriotic, political and personal, and the three are intertwined.”

All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.

Kennedy, whose father is credited for creating the Peace Corps and inspired a generation into service in the 1960s, was a key contributor to an entire issue of TIME Magazine devoted to making The Case for National Service this past September. In the op-ed piece, Kennedy cites Obama’s earliest devotion to public service as a community organizer in Chicago as a first-hand example of how he can inspire a new generation to give back.

Senator Obama has demonstrated these qualities throughout his more than two decades of public service, not just in the United States Senate but in Illinois, where he helped turn around struggling communities, taught constitutional law and was an elected state official for eight years. And Senator Obama is showing the same qualities today. He has built a movement that is changing the face of politics in this country, and he has demonstrated a special gift for inspiring young people — known for a willingness to volunteer, but an aversion to politics — to become engaged in the political process.