August was a wild month for me. I went from an incredible trip to Beijing to watch my son David compete in the Olympics as a member of the U.S. Rowing Team and then almost immediately to Denver, where People For the American Way hosted a forum on the Supreme Court and the 2008 elections.  Here’s a picture from the forum, which was really quite successful.

The panel was moderated by Roy Sekoff, who is the senior editor at the Huffington Post, and on the panel were People For’s President Kathryn Kolbert (who was brilliant), journalist Jeff Rosen, Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, and Michael Strautmanis (former chief counsel to Senator Barack Obama).  The message about the importance of the elections to the future make-up of the Court and the importance of the Court to Americans’ fundamental rights and liberties came home loud and clear.

The forum was Thursday morning and that night I was one of the thousands who stood in line for several hours to get into Invesco to hear Senator Obama accept the nomination of his party.  While listening to him and watching the crowd, I had this “ah ha” moment about the comparisons people had been making between Obama and other historical leaders. I’d heard – and sometimes made myself - the obvious comparisons to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and to President John F. Kennedy. But what struck me at that moment was a comparison to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  As in 1932 , the country is in very difficult times with serious economic challenges at home and threatening clouds abroad. What FDR did was inspire the country not to be afraid, but to believe that change could happen and to believe that government could be, and had a responsibility to be, a force for good in people’s lives. That was the same message I was hearing from the stage in Denver on August 28, 2008.