Change

This has been called a ‘Change’ election.

One problem with calling for change is crystallized in Hillary’s sarcastic moment:

www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/24/hillary-clinton-mocks-bar_n_88194.html [1] - 147k -

Any reply to this should encompass:

Change, and especially great change, is difficult because it will almost certainly be opposed, and vigorously opposed.

We all understand this.

But change is difficult not only because it will be opposed, but because change itself is difficult. Even for those who believe passionately in it. For it requires us to think new thoughts, and to break new ground, and to place ourselves in unfamiliar places.

In this moment the American people appear to believe deeply that we need change, and someone who calls us to this moment by reminding us that we have done this before, by encouraging in us the confidence we can succeed, by calling us to once again become creatures of our hopes and not our fears is performing an inestimable service.

But, in a democracy, it is not the ‘leader’ alone who is critical; it is, it must be, ultimately, we ourselves who matter. It will almost certainly be from the wealth of our thoughts and talents and abilities that we will discover what is needed, and then find the will and the wisdom to implement it.

That is Obama’s message in this moment.

In the whole of his writing, indeed in the whole of the American cannon, Lincoln’s message to Congress 1862 is perhaps the single document most pregnant with meaning for the American Experiment. Its conclusion specifically addresses change and its difficulties: . .The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . ‘we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country . . . . We - even we here - hold the power and bear the responsibility.