Senator Barack Obama addresses National Action Network, New York, April 21, 2007

The last time I was present to see Barack Obama and Al Sharpton on stage, it was spring of 2007. Back then, there was a great deal less security, as I'm sure you can imagine. I was about three or four rows away from the candidate. The front rows were mostly filled with older black folks who had the buttons, colors and vibes of veteran activists of the struggle. Lots of red, black, and green, if you will. There was a great deal of anticipation in the room as we all awaited the candidate. The stage was relatively small. One of those one foot high, quick-set jobs that you can find at almost any reasonably well-maintained chain convention hotel. The podium was rather simple. There were maybe 200 people in the room, including the press. There weren't many important New York public officials present. It was held in one of the side conference rooms and not in a grand ballroom. I remember him arriving in a single black SUV with all his staff and one bodyguard packed in with him. There were plenty of empty seats in the back.

I remember sitting next to a lovely young Puerto Rican lady who was writing for one of those social register type magazines they produce in the Hamptons. I asked her, "Have you seen Senator Obama before?" "No, I've never heard of him" she replied. She informed me that her editor had sent her to this event to report on the ambitious young senator running a long-shot campaign for president. As I had been part of the Draft Obama crowd for some time, it gave me some measure of...i don't know, pride, when I told her that she was in for a treat. We had a good time.

Having never been a fan of "Rev," I couldn't help but find it interesting to see them on stage together. But I quickly put that aside because I was far more interested in watching the crowd. The candidate gave his stump speech, which seemed rote to me since I had seen it on C-Span at least four or five times. He talked about how the civil rights marchers crossed the bridge at Selma. He talked about how women marched and marched for the right to vote. He talked about how the colonists braved against a tyrant King. I had heard it all before. But to the people around me, I had observed, it was all pretty fresh and new. Especially to the young lady sitting next to me. I watched her face light up as he spoke. "Wow!" she said. Like any good candidate, he did his job well: winning over the skeptical, inspiring activism, driving home the message. But what impressed me most about the crowd's reaction to him was the sense of "FINALLY!" By that, I mean the sense that we could get over our race differences and climb this mountain and bring America together. Finally, we had a candidate who could convince America that we are all in this together...to be the tribune for folks who were having it rough long. He told us so, because that is what he did on the streets of Chicago. He was warmly received and frequently cheered.

Last week Barack Obama returned to a stage with Al Sharpton. This time there was a presidential podium, a much larger room, and plenty of business suits and state officials. Secret Service. A presidential retinue and a motorcade you couldn't get close to even if you wanted to. Once again, I was among the crowd with the very same purpose I had when I first attended four years ago. I wanted to watch the crowd, but this time I couldn't. I watched Obama. I wanted to actually listen and hear him explain what has happened since he last appeared. I wanted to see the changes in him, at least those that I could observe from my seat far in the back, behind all the suits and celebrities. Which was okay. I had on a suit, too.

The president's speech can be basically summed up as "we're making progress, but we've got a long way to go." Which, I suppose, is appropriate speech for a president. This well-heeled crowd was rather quiet and sedate, in stark contrast to the one four years ago. Applause came, but it was polite and infrequent. I got the sense that the president was working hard to defend himself from a crowd that already agreed with him. I must admit it was somewhat painful to watch...the silence between applause lines. People checking their BlackBerries during the speech. Some folks just staring blankly, eyes glazed over. He even returned to the Selma, suffrage, and the colonists shtick, but it fell pretty flat. This time, I found myself sitting next to what I could gather was an important attorney of some sort. After Obama finished, he simply said to me, "good speech." "Yeah, good."

President Obama is a good man in a bad system. Despite his best campaign wishes, the Washington that he came to change has gotten the better of him. Even before his inauguration, he chose to be a part of the very system he told us was broken. Appointing their Brahmans to important positions within his administration. Negotiating with their lobbyists. Appeasing their media. But the insider game isn't played for the people he came to address in that conference room four years ago. It is played for the people who sat quietly in that hall last week. Once you become part of a broken system, you too will be broken. He may have thought that he could make this system work for common folks, being the institutionalist that he is. Unfortunately, it won't. If you don't break it, it will break you.

Instead of being the public leader, the transformational leader, that many of us expected, the leader he campaigned to be, he's shrunk. He's just become another Washington insider playing the insider game. The insider game has him making choices between shutting down the government and stepping on the poor. The insider game has him choosing between tax cuts for the wealthy or declaring war on the unemployed middle class. The insider game has convinced him there is almost nothing he can do about the housing crisis. The insider game has him appointing a corporate CEO who ships jobs overseas as the head of his domestic jobs council. The insider game has him appointing the very same people who ran the economy into the ground as his principal economic advisers. He told us of a Washington that was broken, but he was quite mistaken. Washington works just fine. Just not for regular people.

Perhaps we should be grateful for what he has delivered, for the crises he's averted. As presidents go, in spite of the systemic problems in Washington, he's done some good. As a manager, he's run a relatively clean government with no major scandals. He's kept the country safe from foreign invasion or attack. He's gotten up every day, done the job. In his speech this year, he noted many of these accomplishments. All of them were politely applauded. I don't think a single person in the room, including myself, would deny him his due on the good he's done given the circumstances.

But somehow, there is sense that this whole thing was supposed to be...bigger. He was the one who said changes he was seeking were akin to the American Revolution, women's suffrage, and the civil rights movement. He was the one who likened his ascent to a fundamental, realigning, meaningful, transformative event. Instead, he has been mainly tinkering with the establishment, except when the establishment fights back hard and demands no tinkering. We have had nothing akin to any of the major historical events listed above. We instead have a sort of work-a-day, normal, caretaker president. Doing the job, managing the status quo. There is no capital letter movement in this administration.

We approach an election where Barack Obama's name will be on the ballot for the last time. I believe everyone in that room, including me, is going to vote for him. He's been okay as far as presidents go. Considering what came before him or what could come after him, we should probably be grateful he's even choosing to bother. But still, watching him up on the stage made realize how different this event could have been had he only decided that small-ball insider dealmaking isn't how you make fundamental change. If only he realized that the system he's working within isn't designed to work for regular people. That his whole project as a leader wasn't about passing bills and administrating departments, but leading people to change how they think about this country, their government, and each other. Larger in scope. Deeper in meaning. Historic in proportion. That is what this presidency should have, and could have been.

Lets face facts: fundamental change just isn't going to happen by his doing. He's not that kind of guy, despite the high-flying rhetoric. That is something we must live with, especially considering the alternatives. For fear of what could come, he deserves to keep his job. But if there is going to be any real change for the better in this country, it is going to have to happen in spite of him, and on occasion probably against his wishes. His actions these past six months have made it clear he isn't even interested in tinkering anymore. He's made his peace with the establishment.

The people of Wisconsin are showing us the way forward. When I saw the president last week, I realized, sadly, that the Wisconsin Way is the only way forward.