I used to think the most American I would ever feel would have been during my childhood, playing spring baseball, and going for hot dogs, or meeting my grandfather's friends at his reserved regular table at the local diner and being treated to the five and dime. 

 

When I was 17, I journeyed into the wilderness with some nature experts and a Lakota elder. We first held a reconciliation ceremony, in the local Catholic church, reconciliation between the Lakota and the European Catholics who had replaced their culture in North America. It was the 500th anniversary of Columbus' landing, and it was symbolic. Those wounds are not so easily healed. But it felt like we were near the beating heart of a continent, taking the steps we needed to take in order to make sense of who we were. 

 

For much of my life, I was certain we were ascending a virtuous spiral, getting better, getting closer to the ideals we had once set out as our founding principles. I would have told you that it was those clean, Rockwellesque childhood moments, or that sacred time in the woods, that made me feel most like a true American.  

 

And then we became a controversy. Or I noticed we had. 

 

Living in Europe, in my early thirties, enjoying the rhythm of life in Barcelona, a different pattern of everyday beauties, my own creative life, I found myself describing the virtues of American democracy. In 2007 and 2008, I became known among my peers for explaining how the United States was far more liberal than they imagined it, how we were a more sophisticated electorate, how something was stirring. 

 

In Paris, in London, and in Barcelona, I found myself explaining over and over again that they could not understand it, but far from being "not ready" for Barack Obama to win the presidency, what was going on at home was that Obama embodied intangible qualities that we could all recognize as the sage and humane ideals we assign to the notion of an American president. 

 

This kind of thinking rubbed up against a more cynical, hard-bitten attitude toward democracy. In Spain, for instance, democracy is only 30 years old, and some would say most Spaniards had not really discovered anything like "people power" until this year's May 15 protests. In France, the ideals of democracy are a local product, but the powers that be have never truly left the scene. 

 

As far as the United States was concerned, good people, with no anti-American bias would tell me they thought I was dreaming and that the US was too powerful and too mired in the injustices of the past to ever allow Barack Obama to become president. I found myself taking on the role of patriot, explaining that Obama's campaign was an awakening, certainly, but not of a backward nation; it was an awakening of a more enlightened electorate, of a nation that had grown more progressive overall, and that demanded virtues, not Machiavellian manipulations, from its public officials.

 

For me, it was starting to look like he was unbeatable, given that basic American optimism he so ably tapped into. If I had been asked about my most American feeling, I would then have said it was in this rediscovery and this defense of optimism. I would have said that being in Europe, proudly and with certainty defending the underlying optimism and openness of my country, was when I felt most American. 

 

But then, Barack Obama won the presidency. I was vindicated. Our nation was vindicated. Not by electing a Democratic candidate, or a progressive, but because the electorate had risen to the occasion and voted for a more thoughtful, more visionary political discourse. We had shown the world we could reinvent ourselves, we could live up to our ideals, that here: reason could govern. 

On January 20, 2009, I had the privilege to join 2.5 million other people on the National Mall. It was a frigid day of sub-freezing temperatures. And it was a day of joy. It was so joyous an atmosphere, with so much tolerance and good will among the millions gathered, that even Pat Buchanan said of the inauguration that it was the most beautiful thing he had ever witnessed in Washington, DC. 

 

On that day, I could feel the resounding ideals I had always heard of as a child, that made grown men tear up when listening to the Star-spangled Banner, even at recreational baseball games, reverberating all around me. On that day, I could feel the genuine optimism I had proclaimed to my European friends as being fundamental to our culture of civics and democracy. 

I could cite a thousand tiny moments in my life that seem to represent something emblematic, iconic or resonant about our nation's diverse and shared culture. But on January 20, 2009, celebrating the success and advance of our democracy, I felt directly connected to what is best in our culture. Nothing, in today's world, seems more American to me than joining together in an informal fabric, with millions of other Americans, despite the extreme conditions, to honor our ideals and to chart a future of humane and optimistic democracy.

The work that has kept me closest to that sentiment has been my work volunteering with a non-partisan, non-profit organization, working to build the political will for needed policy changes on Capitol Hill. This June, 80 volunteers from across North America, held 144 meetings on Capitol Hill, and that feeling of being part of the process, of being in touch with our government, was palpable. 

In this country, ordinary people really can make the future, if we work to build our own ideals into the landscape of policy and practice. We can speak directly to our government, and work to build consensus for intelligent, collaborative policy to build a better world for ourselves and our children.