"We are witnessing a man of enormous self-regard wrestle with a record of amassing and undeniable failures."

The “Fierce Urgency of Now” Seems Less Fierce These Days
Peter Wehner

During his fundraising trip to Chicago last night, President Obama said, “When I said ‘change we can believe in,’ I didn’t say ‘change we can believe in tomorrow.’ Not change we can believe in next week. We knew this was going to take time because we’ve got this big, messy, tough democracy.”

I went back and read Obama’s Jefferson-Jackson dinner remarks. This is the speech that did the most to catapult Obama to his victory in Iowa, which in turn helped catapult him to the Democratic nomination and, eventually, the presidency.


Funny, but I missed the caveats and qualifiers in Obama’s speech. What I did read is this:

I am running in this race because of what Dr. King called “the fierce urgency of now.” Because I believe that there’s such a thing as being too late. And that hour is almost upon us.

The “fierce urgency of now” seems to be somewhat less fierce these days. And so many of the things Obama didn’t want to wake up four years from now and see are not only not better; they are significantly worse.

“In this election — in this moment — let us reach for what we know is possible,” Obama told an enraptured audience. “A nation healed. A world repaired. An America that believes again.”

Now the president has been reduced to asking for more time because we’ve got this “big, messy, tough democracy.” Who knew American democracy was like that?

There is something plaintive in Obama’s words these days. We are witnessing a man of enormous self-regard wrestle with a record of amassing and undeniable failures. This is creating a kind of cognitive dissonance – a huge mental processing problem — for the president. And so the difficulties we face rest not with Obama but with others, including with the impatience of others. That is of course nonsense; Obama himself made a series of promises at the outset of his presidency regarding job growth, unemployment, the deficit, and much more, all of which he has fallen far short of. Now he says he needs and deserves more time. My guess is the American people will respectfully dissent. They have seen quite enough already.