One of the things that a lot of liberals (myself included) got swept up in in 2008 was the idea that this smart, young courageous US Senator was going to swoop in and solve our problems. He was so successful at doing that that we held him to his word.
And as such, when things didn't go as planned, many of us became disappointed, wary of progress and dubious our collective ability to solve problems.
But I think we should all remember something: there is no such thing as "solving" our nations problems. There is no such thing as our final, devastating victory over the GOP. Politics has always been brutal and often unable to solve our most basic problems.
In time, the current crop of Democrats and GOPers will be gone, replaced by others, fighting all the same.
See the thing is, we never can stop fighting. We can never assume our lives will get better if X happened and then we can stop fighting. It doesn't work like that.
Horrible, self-inflicted wounds will continue to occur. It is in the basic nature of humans to look the other way when things are going well. Wall Street will fall again. Our oceans will rise, our children will fail to get the education they need. Even if we do our job and pass legislation to "take care" of these problems.
That's because we can't ever take care of our problems. We have to always be vigilant, always look out for the public interest as a nation. Always look out for the national interest.
In this light, Barack Obama has tried to do a great deal. He has encountered many problems, stabilized some, created more long-term fixes for others, and either has been unable to fix some or unwilling to do what's necessary on others.
We can't judge what has happened in the last two years in the short run. We can't measure success based on "did the economy rebound?" or "did we fix our energy economy?", etc. I don't say this because I think Obama or our leaders have been up to the task. Only time will tell.
But what I can say is that the world changes slowly, sometimes imperceptibly, but the reality of change always hits us in the end. The great Max Weber called politics the "slow boring of hard boards." If the last two years haven't showed you that, I really don't know what will.
The arc of the moral universe is long, Dr. King said, but it bends towards justice.
There is no tipping point in America or in this world. But there are moments when we can see what we have achieved, great or small.
For that, we can love this country, both for what it can and can't do.
Happy 4th of July.