Civic Power

On a frigid January evening in 2008, Barack Obama, then merely a junior senator from Illinois, shocked the political establishment by winning the Iowa Caucus. At the boisterous celebration rally, Obama delivered what would become one of the signature speeches of his political career, defining many of the central themes of his campaign and his presidency. [T]he time has come," Obama declared, "to tell the lobbyists who think their money and their influence speak louder than our voices that they don't own this government-we do. And we are here to take it back!" If there was a central message in Obama's 2008 campaign for the White House, it was this faith in a revival of American democracy-the belief "that in the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.""--