Author: Will Bellaimey
"This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly," Franklin D. Roosevelt told the country in his first inaugural address, "but let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
The policies Barack Obama offers are nothing revolutionary. For years Democrats have proposed similar plans to slow climate change, to reform our broken health care system, and to restore a vibrant middle class based on equal opportunity for all.
What is revolutionary about Obama is his willingness to speak the truth, frankly and boldly. Throughout this campaign he has spoken to Americans with an eloquence and maturity that we imagined had been lost to the era of the five-second sound-byte. Democrats from Bill Clinton to John Kerry believed that liberals could only succeed with laundry lists of issues and poll-tested buzzwords. They ceded morality and guts to the Republicans, who gave us fear and blind machismo in return.
Words matter. The most important job of the next President will be to articulate a compelling vision of America at home and abroad. Barack Obama can't deliver all the changes we need by himself. That will take a decades-long movement and a broad political coalition. But he can speak the truth like no one else and inspire hope, yes hope, that oft mocked antidote to the fear that has paralyzed us for far too long. We cannot retreat.
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