Big Dreams ..... Big Opportunity

[Stinky The Clown]

I'm old enough to remember clearly John Kennedy's 1960 inaugural speech. "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." I remember Camelot. I remember the Peace Corps and the 'put a man on the moon' challenge. I remember the roller coaster that was the Cuban missile crisis and our victory there. I was a boy, but I remember. It was that big, even then. I viscerally felt that hope.

Reagan tried, and in many ways succeeded, in having that same sort of bright vision. Just think of all the current Republicans who claim - honestly or not - to have been inspired to enter politics by St Ronnie. Agree or not with his positions, we all have to admit he was sunny and ever-hopeful .... and many, many Americans bought it. Just as they did more than twenty years earlier with John Kennedy.

In both cases, these men took office at the crest of a hopeful wave of change. Neither man lived in sunny times, really. But sunny were the men themselves. And sunny was what they demonstrated.

And so we find ourselves today. On the crest of a building wave of change. (Yes, we're still down and there's much to be done. But there's no denying that things are swinging our way.)

Our new message, whatever it is, NEEDS to be seen as hopeful. Sunny, even. Not to gloss over what's actually happeneing. But rather, to highlight it as a contrast to where WE want to take the country.

Think about it. There's NO hope at all in the Republican message. It is all fear and all hate and all loathing and all suspicious and all war and all scary.

That's NOT who we are. Or at least not who we want to be. And by 'we' I mean the overwhelming majority of Americans. Not left or right. And surely not the fringes at the left or right. I'm talking about the average person on our national Main Street.

I see us as having the biggest opportunity in at least a generation to put forth a positive message and win with it.

You want to talk about contrast? THAT's as stark a contrast as I can imagine. Our message of hope against their message of fear.

Fear is a bankrupted policy. It has been played as far as it can be played.

The opportunity is SURELY there. We need only be up to the task.