Barrack Obama speaks: Tonight,
more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less.
More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home
values plummet. More of you have cars you can’t afford to drive, credit
card bills you can’t afford to pay, and tuition that’s beyond your
reach.

These challenges are not all of government’s making. But
the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in
Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush.

America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this.

This
country is more decent than one where a woman in Ohio, on the brink of
retirement, finds herself one illness away from disaster after a
lifetime of hard work.

This country is more generous than one
where a man in Indiana has to pack up the equipment he’s worked on for
twenty years and watch it shipped off to China, and then chokes up as
he explains how he felt like a failure when he went home to tell his
family the news.

We are more compassionate than a government
that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into
poverty; that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns
before our eyes.

Tonight, I say to the American people, to
Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land -
enough! This moment - this election - is our chance to keep, in the
21st century, the American promise alive. …

I realize that I am not the likeliest candidate for this
office. I don’t fit the typical pedigree, and I haven’t spent my career
in the halls of Washington.

But I stand before you tonight
because all across America something is stirring. What the nay-sayers
don’t understand is that this election has never been about me. It’s
been about you.

For eighteen long months, you have stood up, one
by one, and said enough to the politics of the past. You understand
that in this election, the greatest risk we can take is to try the same
old politics with the same old players and expect a different result.
You have shown what history teaches us - that at defining moments like
this one, the change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes
to Washington. Change happens because the American people demand it -
because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new
politics for a new time.

America, this is one of those moments. (08/30/08)
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