365 days and 200 Years Later

I have been blogging about Barack Obama for one solid year, and now that he is President-elect, I have to say that I am very proud of the campaign he has run.

His message has remained one of national unity, hope and principle.

His campaign has continued to talk to us as if we are adults. It has avoided cheap shots and facile answers to complex problems.

It has been a campaign that has appealed to our better natures.

And, against all odds, America has stepped up to the plate.

Now a transition team is in place, briefing books are being prepared, and policy options are being weighed.

All of this is good and expected from a team which has proven itself visionary and hard-working, competent and calm.

But we must brace ourselves.

Because Barack Obama is going to ask something from each and every one of us.

He is going to ask us to come together as a people to change the way we do business.

And he is not going to ask us to do it once, but ever day for weeks and months and years at a time.

Because good things are built slowly, and only disaster comes in a rush.

And we need to build a lot of things.

We need a new economy; one that cannot be held hostage by oil-besotted despots in unstable regions of the world.

We need new schools and roads and bridges to replace our crumbling infrastructure.

We need need a new ethic which does not elevate greed and intolerance as virtues.

We need a new way of rewarding true investment which is the opposite of the revolving-door accounting popular on Wall Street.

We need a health care system for all, because rich and poor, old and young, liberal or conservative, we are all going to be sick one day.

The job ahead is the same as the job behind; to rise up and respond to those who say "No, we can't" with three simple worlds: Yes. We. Can.

We must be evangelical in carrying our message that America can be better.

We must face down those who would appeal to the base emotions of fear and greed, jealousy and contrived crisis.

We must stand and deliver and not be deflected by the nannying know-nothings on Fox News or the professional critics in the right-wing blogosphere who have been cheer leaders for a pointless war even as they have sneered at peace, mocked the poor, and elevated greed as a virtue.

The Obama Administration has been given a sack of broken rocks: two wars, a crushing national debt, a stock market in free fall, rising unemployement, crashing housing values, and an energy policy that will bankrupt us as quickly as it will destroy the planet.

We are not going to get out of this mess quickly, easily or cheaply. Let us not kid ourselves about that.

And let us not shrink from what will be asked of us, for in the struggle is the value, as Tom Paine said more than 250 years ago:

THESE are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain, too cheap, we esteem too lightly:--'Tis dearness only that gives every thing its value.
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