Yes We Can

I encourage you, no matter what you think of this election, to watch our next President's speech from when he lost the New Hampshire primary. I just watched it at my office at work and, after composing myself, came here to encourage anyone who reads this to do the same.

If you can't watch it, or if you'd just rather read it, the text is here. I want to highlight two specific things he said.

All of the candidates in this race share these goals. All have good ideas. And all are patriots who serve this country honorably.

But the reason our campaign has always been different is because it’s not just about what I will do as President, it’s also about what you, the people who love this country, can do to change it.

To those who cynically say that nothing will change, or who worry that we've made the wrong decision in all this, take comfort in the fact that it's up to you. The most significant promise this presidency has made is that you are in fact responsible for the change you want to see in this country.

At the campaign rally where I saw Obama speak, he said that his Presidency would fail if we didn't rise up and act. Anyone who worries about big government should understand this about our next President. The door is open for you to be the change that you want.

I know that many people would call me naïve for all this. I know there are cynics or realists who tell us that politics doesn't work this way, that it's not going to happen the way we think. That we've all been brainwashed and that nothing is ever going to be different. But I think they miss the point -- we've already begun to change. The results of November 4th, 2008, are just the wonderful, visible proof.

After all,

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks to come. We’ve been asked to pause for a reality check. We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we’ve been told that we’re not ready, or that we shouldn’t try, or that we can’t, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people.

Yes we can.

So to the person who wrote, "Nothing will change. Mark these words." I say to you -- I will mark them. I'll mark them in the same way we marked the words that said a black man couldn't possibly be elected President. And the words that said his lack of experience would ruin his campaign, that the timing wasn't right, that it couldn't be done.

By proving them wrong, Barack Obama sucked all of the sap, all of the naïveté out of those three words -- yes we can.