Obama

I just saw that Senator Barack Obama was going to be on Larry King tonight. I'll be sorry to miss it. I saw him on Oprah yesterday almost by accident and he was phenomenal. For the first time in a long time, I was proud and gratified to be an American in this century. He just wrote a book titled The Audacity of Hope which was the name of his galvanizing speech at the last Democratic National Convention.

I’m not talking about blind optimism here -- the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.

Hope -- Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!

In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.

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