Changing Course

This week we've all had a stark reminder about the need to heal our planet. And many of us remember that it was Mitt Romney who thought that was a joke.

It might be helpful for us all at this moment to remember exactly what it was that President Obama said - right here in my hometown - on the night that he clinched the Democratic nomination.

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge -- I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations, but I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people.

Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless.

... this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.

... this was the moment when we ended a war, and secured our nation, and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.

This was the moment, this was the time when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.

The beginning of that refrain is something those of us who have actually been listening to the President have been hearing for a long time now.

Xpostfactoid wrote a wonderful article about this today that you all MUST read. In it he pointed to this quote from President Obama.

This metaphor has been used before, but this -- the ship of state is an ocean liner; it's not a speed boat. And so the way we are constantly thinking about this issue of how to bring about the changes that the American people need is to -- is to say, if we can move this big battleship a few degrees in a different direction, we may not see all the consequences of that change a week from now or three months from now, but 10 years from now, or 20 years from now, our kids will be able to look back and say that was when we started getting serious about clean energy, that's when health care started to become more efficient and affordable, that's when we became serious about raising our standards in education.

This is the long game we keep talking about. It's as much about a change of course as it is about specific immediate change.

I don't know about you - but that's exactly think kind of change I can believe in.