Colin Powell called Barack Obama a "transformational figure" on Sunday, and it's hard to disagree. He's already pulled together a large, diverse swath of our country, much of it from what was thought to be immutable apathy, and transformed it into the most efficient campaign apparatus in American history. Along the way, he convinced three million Americans to invest their money in his vision of the country.
But all of the field offices, bake sales and Facebook groups, all of the jobs vacated, careers bookmarked and lives placed on hold -- it will all amount to little if the transformation reverses itself on November 5.
That's why Obama, should he win, ought to start with his national service initiative, or, as they're calling it, his plan for Universal Voluntary Public Service (UVPS). It's the surest way to quickly mobilize the extraordinary supply of human energy he has amassed.
He'll need that energy, because winning the election will have been the easy part. Running the country, comparatively, will be like chasing an exploding bag of shit. Where does the clean-up start? Health care? The banks? The environment? Iraq? Afghanistan? It's all urgent, and it will require belt-tightening on a macro scale.
With that in mind, a President Obama should take a beat and put out the word: all hands on deck. UVPS would be a mission statement for his administration: We're all in this together. It also expands the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps, subsidizes college tuition for students who volunteer, and expands volunteer opportunities for the retired. More generally, it lets Americans know: public service is where it's at.
Starting with UVPS is essential for a couple of reasons. First, Obama is not Superman. While he has sold himself as a new kind of leader, it doesn't take a skeptic to wonder how one politician can impact a Washington culture that seems awfully set in its ways?
The answer is, he can't. But, as Obama himself has said repeatedly from the stump, the millions who have worked together to put him in the White House can. His campaign is in high gear, and an Obama administration must find a way to transplant that whirring engine into the broken-down, rusty, salvage-titled junker sitting on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Second, time will be of the essence. Look, a lot of his supporters are all but expecting cherry blossoms on the Mall this January -- but a serious dose of DC gridlock is more realistic. Sure, a President Obama would likely have a Democratic Congress, but the more he struggles to roll out the ambitious proposals he campaigned on, the more quickly he'll resemble the politicians he was elected to replace.
My guess is, if he acts quickly, people will continue to respond. The campaign didn't create this energy. It merely tapped a well of disaffection eight years deep -- Americans who felt marginalized by the Bush presidency, who were told they were unpatriotic if they didn't support a bullying foreign policy, who didn't see the point of a government that would sooner spy on its citizens than keep them healthy, and who, despite their formidable numbers, failed again and again to speak in unison.
As President Reagan (who Senator Obama has himself called "transformational") did for the modern conservative movement, Obama gave these downtrodden voters focus. As one of them, I can only say that I'm tired of having nothing asked of me. Obama criticized our president for missing an opportunity, after 9/11, to mobilize the nation. As he well knows, there's another such opportunity right now -- but it won't last forever. If, come January 20, we're calling Senator Obama "Mr. President," it would be a huge mistake if he waits long to call on us.