Can we find ideas — political ideas — big enough to be worthy of this moment?
You know, before the cynicism and the disappointment and the recession and the dumbed-down media and, oh yeah, the regrouping Republicans, conspire to dull Barack Obama’s election into the bitter memory of hope and harass his presidency into something that resembles Clintonism and business slightly to the left of usual (if that).
Right now and perhaps for the fabled “first hundred days,” the sense of possibility is as palpable as it is vague. There’s a yearning in the air, but for what? When I was at the post office the other day, the clerk could scarcely contain her enthusiasm for the Lincoln stamps she was showing me — four views of Honest Abe, see. Here he is as a young man; now he’s practicing law; now he’s in Congress; and, finally, here’s the 16th president, the Great Emancipator, deep and wise, the Lincoln we remember, in the embrace of history and myth.
And we both knew, in some unstated way, that she was really showing me Obama stamps. This is what our expectations are, and they’re impossible. Yes, of course.