"There's this nation across the water there, called America..."

The last portion of Barack Obama's economic policy speech today was so inspiring that I'm posting it here as an .mp3 file.

After speaking for nearly half an hour about the specific challenges we face and some of the difficult things we will need to do to overcome them, he reminds us that "we can do this because we've done it before."

Obama girds his audience for the challenge of confronting our economic crisis by recalling the basic essence of Americans in our own family histories who have sacrificed to give us more than they had. He recalls and elegantly lays out the American dream in a manner that can be identified by everyone, and then directly ties it to himself as a politician of the moment, and then invites everyone to join him to renew the America of our dreams.

What is most amazing to me is that he is rallying us around the idea of sacrifice- that we will be doing this for those who come after us. He concludes not with a list of promises or a vision of life on easy street, but by telling us that we can aspire to be good enough, and tough enough, to build something better for future Americans.

There are an infinite number of reasons to be cynical, but at this moment, I am choosing to cling to the hope that maybe, just maybe, someone has come along who can make us all believe in our country again, and who can do just as much good with the presidency as the outgoing occupant has done harm.