No Bump in the Road
I appreciate what Michael Goodwin has written in his NY Daily News Column because I think it catches what's going on here and what the stakes are for Hillary and others.
The nostalgia for the '90s, a move for a restoration of the Clinton presidency, isn't a persuasive rationale. The flaw was on display in her speech - surrounded by Bill and some of his old aides, she was a tableau of the past, not the future. As she ticked off mind-numbing policy plans as though the presidency is a collection of legislative initiatives, she probably lost a few early votes in New Hampshire, too. Obama gets the essence of the job he is seeking, the idealized version anyway. His victory speech was infectious. His incantation of hope, combined with an eloquent sweep of American history's celebration of the underdog, is much, much more than a promise of policy change. You can't imagine her invoking Valley Forge and Selma the way he did.
Her campaign is a campaign. His is a movement.
Yes, he's young and inexperienced and short on specifics. But he clearly represents more radical
change from the status quo than she does. Whether he represents too much change is what the rest of the campaign will be about. But make no mistake - Americans are hungry for something different, race and youth be damned.
The 1990s were a decent time, but this is 2007. This isn't the time to simply reestablish the Clinton White House of 1992-2000. The movement of hope is afoot!
For many months, we've been teased, even derided for talking about hope.
But we always knew that hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to
fight for it.
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