Barack Obama wrote a book called the Audacity of Hope.

Bill Clinton promoted himself as presidential candidate in 1992 as the Man from Hope, Arkansas. It’s easy to recall that in 2008, Mr. Clinton insulted the Obama candidacy as “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen,” while Senator Hillary Clinton labeled Senator Obama’s many campaign promises as “false hopes”. Even Abraham Lincoln suggested America was the last best hope on earth.

Hope is part of the American political lexicon because the new world was meant to move past the ancient, and the traditional, and the difficult, with promises of new discovery, new opportunity, a new day. America has always invited dreamers and change seekers, progressives and promoters.

Hope is as natural to Americans as new, improved, & whiter than white! toothpaste and detergent.

But hope is not enough for statecraft.

Florentine statesman and philosopher Machiavelli, among many serious thinkers, pointed out that hope is a Christian virtue, not a political slogan. The Latin for virtue is strength, or courage. Hope is the serious call to good works, not emotional fantasy. Hope sustains us when the true answer to hard political choices is “no, we cannot,” instead of “yes, we can.” Ecumenically, Israel’s national anthem, Hatikvah, also means “The Hope.” As you can see, hope runs deep in our Judeo-Christian, western civilization – as monotheism rejected the idea that our human existence consisted of mere circularity. Hope implies an evolutionary line, not a circle.

Indeed, the possibilities of social, personal, political progress are seemingly endless. Yet, modern progressives have it incomplete because we are also the American heirs to first principles and eternal verities and unchanging, absolute truths.

And, fundamentally, human nature does not change. Do not human virtues and sins look pretty much the same as they always have? Reality may bite, but it always arrives. And complete justice, equality, or harmony never appears.

America’s Founding Father’s knew about nature and natural rights. They did not believe we could calibrate our political instincts and passions like a finely-tuned clock. They built instead a system of checks and balances, always recognizing human nature as unchanging.

Times change, people don’t. The 20th century was human history’s most brutal and murderous. The 21st has revealed tribal barbarism now married to weapons of mass destruction. Still want to brief for the evolution of man ?

Remember Senator Ted Kennedy’s famous proclaimation: The Dream Will Never Die! The dream for what ? Perfection? The American way is to seek a more perfect union, never a perfected one.

School kids know this . . . one can hope for a good grade or one can do the homework and study and simply earn one. We can hope our team will win . . . hope our stock will go up . . . hope the guy or gal will return our affection. But that appears to be the least American strategy.

For we are a nation of doers, strivers, performers . . . our destiny is in our hands, and it is personal responsibility, not hope for government salvation, that marks the American way.

Hope is meant by the Left to replace planning, preparing, and performing. Sometimes we will come up short, that’s ok. Failure is a blessing, guide, and teacher. We should not underestimate it in a free market society.

The use of the political slogan of hope, rather than realism, responsibility, or a re-unification
of the wayward Democratic party with the mainstream of the American polity, has left President Obama vulnerable to ever-disappointing the American electorate. How will he ever live up to the hype of hope?

Obama has already lost the political support of many centrists and independents at home and many well wishers abroad. He has spent our children’s future, offended our international friends, and let down dissidents from China to Iran, and broken promises on Darfur. Hope has disappeared and been replaced by the politics of partisan division, rancor and name calling.

The bursting deficits, unemployment rolls, and anger in the land has proved Obama’s critics correct. Mr. Obama, a man who never wore the uniform, built a business, or achieved much at all in politics prior to his glamorized campaign, offered not much more than mere hope. And hope alone doesn’t get the grade, the girl, or the gold.