Where the Clouds are Far Behind

Dorothy: Oh will you help me? Can you help me?

Glinda, the Good Witch of the North: You don't need to be helped any longer. You've always had the power to go back to Kansas.

Dorothy: I have?

The Scarecrow: Then why didn't you tell her before?

Glinda, the Good Witch of the North: Because she wouldn't have believed me. She had to learn it for herself.

In a 1967 speech delivered at Riverside Church in New York City, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. told an American population increasingly distressed by the Vietnam war, to "move past indecision to action." It was time, King argued, to accept that "tomorrow is today," and that "there is such a thing as being too late." It was this speech, during which King told listeners that they were being "confronted with the fierce urgency of now," that Barack Obama offered up as explanation for why he entered the presidential race as a neophyte senator. Told time and time again that he was too young and inexperienced, he'd have other chances to become president, it was Clinton's year, and that the nation might not be ready to embrace an African-American candidate for its highest office, Obama did not waver. Instead, he argued that while one may arrive too early for some, such is far better than arriving too late for many.

Tomorrow is election day. Tomorrow is today. We are again confronted with the fierce urgency of now. And, should we not move past indecision and into action, by electing Barack Obama the next President of the United States, we will be too late - too late to salvage our international credibility as Earth's last best hope, too late to turn the tide of division that threatens to culturally fracture us once and for all and, worst of all, too late to realize we've had the power to go back (or forward) within us all along.

The oughts of the twenty-first century, and the 2008 election cycle it understandably spawned, have provided more than their fair share of reasons for outrage to those paying attention and more than was fair of the sort of hapless leadership that left the led feeling helpless. Beginning with the curse of the butterfly ballot eight years ago, our nation slid into disrepute at an alarming rate, with most of us too numb for too long to even realize the great power that still lay within us. No one can ever-again convincingly argue that votes don't matter. Even those who voted for Bush (twice) would acknowledge that our world is radically different than it would otherwise have been had a few thousand votes in Florida and/or Ohio gone differently. And, yes, even some of them might agree with me that it is radically worse.

Tomorrow provides an opportunity to transform ourselves and our world. And all such transformation requires of us is the courage of the American patriot willing to trade life for liberty, the heart of the American abolitionist willing to lead others from the darkness, and the brains of the American inventor willing to conceive the inconceivable, achieving the seemingly unachievable.

I did not enter, or exit, the Democratic primaries supporting Barack Obama. And, though, my hardcore liberal Democrat ideology would never have allowed me a vote for anyone other than the Democratic nominee in the general election, whomever he or she turned out to be, I am, for the first time, going to vote for a presidential candidate in whom I believe. Obama has the thoughtfulness, the incisiveness and the steadiness that defines great leadership. He knew something years ago I willingly admit I did not: there is such a thing as being too late, and he is and always was, the perfect leader for these imperfect times.

I will be proud of my country when he's elected president tomorrow (when, not if - I am no longer a doubter). I will be proud of myself for casting a vote in his support. And, more, I will be proud of the campaign he ran, the foresight he displayed and the future he will help us deliver to ourselves.

Obama hasn't told us anything we didn't already know or were apt to disbelieve - about our troubles, our missteps, or our need, or capacity, for change. Despite ignorant claims to the contrary, he hasn't stepped forward as some chosen "one," puffed up by an arrogant belief that only he can lead us through these harrowing times, traversing the difficult journey from today to tomorrow. Rather, he's watched, with great care, as we've taken this journey for ourselves - a journey wherein we've learned that, once we so chose, we didn't need to be helped at all.

Change. Hope. Progress. America. These are not places or possessions, not things for which we need go in search; they are neither outside nor beyond us. They are within us. And they have been, all along.

Tomorrow, we will return home - certainly not a place where there isn't any trouble, but ours nonetheless - and show the world what we've learned.