The "Why Not?" of Hope & Change

The “hopey-changey” thing that Ms. Palin refers to is the stuff that dreams are made of. The reason some politicians succeed where others have failed is predicated upon their ability to convince people to get on board with their pie-in-the sky visions for a better tomorrow.

 

Starting with FDR, who told us “Happy days are here again” in the middle of the worst Depression in US history, we’ve learned to listen to what our leaders say and take it with a grain of salt. He said we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Actually, as one pundit pointed out recently, that’s not true.  There were a hell of a lot of things to fear during the Great Depression. But Roosevelt made us believe all things are possible.
 

John F Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” With those words, he instilled a generation of young people with hope and passion to change the world by joining the Peace Corps and working towards the goal of landing a man on the moon.
 

Reagan used the phrase, “a shining city on the hill” to refer to our Utopian dream of the United States. His campaign phrase, “Morning in America” answered his question, “Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?”
 

George H. Bush (I) spoke of a vision of “a thousand points of light” to generate and inspire us about the future of the United States. And Bill Clinton simply took the metaphor of a bridge to inspire Americans to build a bridge to the twenty-first century.

 

So when Obama came along with the politics of hope and change, many critics loved to trash his lofty and at times quixotic use of language to describe his hope for our future. One of the most prescient observations during Obama’s first inaugural came from someone who said, “Well, of course it won’t last.” The high hopes and exhilarating moments of the campaign were quickly brought down to earth with the very mundane details of governing. As Cuomo said, ‘You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”

 

All successful politicians use the language of hope and change. Some of it is pie-in-the-sky, visions of a tomorrow only found in our dreams. But the best Presidents, and the best politicians, still inspire us to dream of things that may never be. Robert Kennedy said it best when he spoke about the hopeful nature of Americans and their dreams. He said, “There are those who look at things the way they are,and ask, 'Why?'  I dream of things that never were and ask, “Why not?”

When we watch politicians at work and feel only cynicism for the things that will never be, we should instead stop ourselves at some point and remember to ask, “Why not?”