The Last 'Yes, We Can' Candidate

"This is our time," Obama says in a short sentence full of meaning. The conservative age is as dead now as the liberal age was in 1980. Jimmy Carter, in many ways not a liberal at all, became the whipping boy for the end of liberalism. George W. Bush, no pure conservative, has come to symbolize the collapse of conservatism. "It is time to turn the page and write a new chapter in American history," Obama says -- exactly the sentiment of the Ronald Reagan who invoked Tom Paine.

The frustration of the Clinton campaign is understandable. Like George H.W. Bush, whom Reagan defeated for the presidential nomination in 1980, Hillary Clinton has worked very hard, knows government from the inside out and would clearly provide the country with a safe set of hands. The Clintonites argue, fairly, that there is no way to know if Obama can live up to The Promise of Obama.

But the same was true of Ronald Reagan. In that 1980 speech, Reagan quoted a certain Democratic president who "told the generation of the Great Depression that it had a 'rendezvous with destiny.' I believe that this generation of Americans today has a rendezvous with destiny."

Obama is being propelled by the same sense of historical opportunity, and that is why it will be hard to derail him.

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I mourn the passing of William F. Buckley Jr., a man I admired hugely. I offer a tribute to Buckley on my discussion Web site, E.J.'s Precinct, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/precinct.

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