I had a dream after Election Night 2008.

I was touched by the turning of a page, and given an image of what history has written.

Ahead of the game, I sensed the movement in the spirit of the times, felt the tension in the timbre of the tenor, knew the calling and attunement of the tone.

My dream named the unconscious inspirations of a new millennial attitude: like the songs in the background when commercials play; or the way issues at the periphery of our national conversation draw a taut correlation with the struggle at the center.

I was with a friend.  It was no one in particular, perhaps anyone who is able to receive something that I can share.

We were in a dim location.  It was difficult to see each other, but I reached out and found that I could show you something.  I put my fingertips against yours, communicating by touch and by feel.

I was teaching you to play a song on the piano.  The music is very simple, very easy to play.  I sang the notes as I pressed one finger at a time, so you would get the idea.

The song is "Colour My World."  It's a romantic ballad that I remember from childhood.  I was 15 when the song was released in 1970; and although it was too saccharine for my youthful taste, it has a sweetness that I appreciate more, since Election Night 2008.

"Color my world with hope," the lyricist pleaded.  It was one of the signature tunes of a group that was known in their first album as CTA, or Chicago Transit Authority; and in their second album, and ever afterward, as Chicago.

In those days of vinyl, a record album was like a newspaper.  (You remember those, too, don't you?)  The cover was a big cardboard sleeve that you could hold in your lap and study while you put the record on the turntable the first time.  Sometimes all the lyrics were published with it, so you could follow along as it played.  And for the many who had ears, Chicago was one of those groups of artists — like the Beatles, or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young — who delivered a message about the state of the world, and about a world that we were all dreaming into existence.

Chicago came on the scene not long after the 1968 Democratic National Convention took place in the city of Chicago, where violent demonstrations burned themselves into public memory. It was afterward called a police riot by investigative commissions.  Some say there were provocations; but what's important is not who was to blame or who was at fault, but that it was a trauma that affected all Americans, not least of all that immature and rebellious movement that struggled to hold out a healing and hopeful promise.

Like many in that era who believed in the necessity to create radical change in American society and government, the members of Chicago Transit Authority embraced an affinity with this country's Revolutionary founders.  Their first, double album was a manifesto.  With flowing calligraphic script emulating the documents articulating this nation's ideals and principles, the album cover featured a personal statement, signed by all the musicians, of the Cause to which they pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.

Chicago's music added yet another voice to the chorus that seemed to come from all directions, from every segment of society, amplifying the youthful generation's quest for personal and political transformation.  Like audio postcards from the Revolution, Chicago's songs even incorporated a soundtrack from those calamitous protests outside the Democratic convention.

"The whole world's watching, the whole world's watching," the ardent crowd chanted, striking a painful immediacy to the image of bloodied faces and wooden clubs cracking skulls.  "God give us the blood to keep going!" one of the crowd's leaders railed, uttering a prayerfully impassioned vow of defiant pacifism in the face of tyranny.

Forty years later, in that same Chicago park where Vietnam anti-war protesters had appealed to the conscience of the world, a man of color stood on a day of judgment. His voice touched billions around the globe, as his image flitted across cellphones and laptops and screens as big as cathedrals.  In front of him, hundreds of thousands of people danced and wept and shook with uncontrollable joy, as Americans by the millions cast their vote to judge him, not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.

Among the faces in the crowd — the lasting memory for me — the most moving tribute was in the eyes of Jesse Jackson.  Forget for a moment his missteps, miscalculations, misspoken words.  Few of us can know what a lifetime of struggle has meant for Jackson, from the days of Martin Luther King and 60s race riots to his own groundbreaking quests for the Democratic Party's Presidential nomination.  Every ounce of it was there, as Barack Hussein Obama began his acceptance speech, on Election Night 2008.  As the last word fell, a dam burst, and a tidal wave of emotion staggered him.

"He did it," might have been the caption, "He did it."  Jackson later explained what his expression had held; and I understood that in this man who had kept hope alive, who had kept his eyes on the prize, it was not only remembrance of his own struggle, but the entire struggle of an oppressed people.  Out of captivity they had come, yet they were not redeemed.  Martyrs had been taken, by ones and by twos, their blood crying out in that park in Chicago, how long, O Lord?  Jackson spoke of Dr. King and Medgar Evers, how they had suffered and died, and what it might have meant for them to witness, not a mere triumph for Obama, but as he took charge of the great American nation, in a voice ringing with authority, proving the mettle of honor for all people of color.  But you are wrong, Jesse.  You are Martin; you are Malcolm; you are Medgar.  You have fought their battles, and lived their pain; and in you they were present.  Through your eyes, they saw.  Resurrection is complete.  The anointment has been made.  In the place where it was said, you are not My people, now it is said, you are My people.

This is part of the legacy of Election Night 2008.  Such are the depths of movement in the American soul, touching black, white, all the rainbow. It is rare that we see so much so clearly in a man's face; but the undercurrents of emotion are always present.  In fact, they are what drives every inch of progress, when all the rhetoric is stripped away, and all the ballots have been cast.

Our history is piled with trauma upon trauma.  Mistakes are compounded by worse mistakes; a glitch becomes a bloodletting.  Miscreant leadership stokes the flames, injects jaundice, rakes the wounds.  Incompetence punts, or fumbles.  How rare is it that we live to see so much healing in one fragile hour, as we received on Election Night 2008?

I am whispering now, but keep this near your heart, as many lifetimes have passed, and many more may pass without ever receiving a gift of such power.  Follow the sound of my voice, if you can.  I will make the notes plain, to show you the colors of the truth.

We still don't know much about the new era that's dawning, and whether we'll solve the excruciating difficulties we face; but I hear a song of the Sixties playing in the background.

I don't think it was an accident of history that John McCain sought to hold Barack Obama responsible (through the person of William Ayers) for the excesses of the 60s youth movement.  The criticism wouldn't stick, because Obama didn't match the radical characterization.  But look more deeply at the candidacy of Obama — and now his developing Presidency — and we see the coming of age of much that was positive and constructive in the impatient explosion of that era.

The legacy of the 1960s has often been painted in terms of anger, nihilism and self-indulgence, but some who were there may remember it differently.  It was about the quest to become fully human.  The prevalence of long hair among men, hand-embroidered jeans and other fashions pointed to an embrace of the softer side of masculinity, paralleling the emergence of modern feminism.

This was a reaction to what was felt as a sterile coldness inherited from the previous generation.  The Vietnam War provided a focal point for dissent, but it was symbolic of even larger issues that were viewed as cultural and systemic. As Eisenhower had warned, the "military-industrial complex" was seeking to control America, and the war was its consummate exploit.  Those who opposed these forces attacked all forms of rigidity and authoritarianism: inflexible 9-to-5 work schedules, educational practices that stifled creativity, organizational tendencies that suppressed individuality, and the general inability of many parents to address the real person emerging in their children's maturation.

"Letting it all hang out" led to excesses that sometimes proved destructive, but there was profound vitality in the widespread experimentation that permeated every field.  And the constructive coalition of environmentalism, civil rights and women's rights (among others) that fused in the Vietnam antiwar movement produced long-lasting changes in American society.  Listen to T. Boone Pickens discuss green energy today, and you may realize that current mainstream dialogue on the issue is forged around positions that once belonged to a despised fringe group.

But the Revolution that was predicted, for example, by Charles Reich in The Greening Of America never took place. Reich saw the logical culmination of small changes at the personal level, along with grassroots developments in the public sphere, leading to ultimate political consequence, like the blossoming and fruition of a plant that grows from seed.  Instead, what occurred seemed very nearly its opposite.

The assassination of John Lennon in December 1980, mourned by many as the "death of a dream," was like a punctuation mark after the electoral victory of Ronald Reagan.  Reagan embodied the antithesis of much that was intrinsic to the 60s' innovative intent.  The notion of a "Reagan Revolution" to describe the accomplishments of his Presidency was not merely crediting his far-reaching influence; it was deliberate usurpation of the language of his adversaries, and a backhanded slap at the values and vision of those whom he pushed aside.

Reagan invoked the Jeffersonian principle, "that government governs best that governs least."  This outlook challenged many prevailing assumptions about the role and function of government.  But dialogue was not a Reagan trademark, nor did he raise meaningful questions on the subject; rather, he arrived in Washington with a preconceived set of virtually unshakable ideas, and used his formidable charm and political skill to steamroll his way through Congress.

Reagan had developed the belief that government, and in particular the federal government, was never the solution to society's ills, but the misapplication of government was the single greatest problem in American life.  The twin burdens of taxation and regulation crushed initiative, discouraged small business and generally made life hell for the "little guy."  Moreover, he saw the triumph of those who had the wit and pluck to be most successful in the marketplace as good for the economy and the country as a whole.

Consequently, he used the levers of power to unlevel the playing field, to favor and enhance the success of those already at the top.  The fact that this rationale is flawed could not penetrate the essentially inflexible Reagan mindset. Girded by some valid ideas and basically worthy motives, he remained unflappably impervious to the deleterious effects of many of his actions.

Reagan's benighted leadership produced radical change, but it was reactionary, not revolutionary. It was the denial and negation of both the spirit of social upheaval that had emerged during the 1960s, and of the legislation that it had fostered.  The "military-industrial complex" was reaffirmed and reinforced, and big business was invited to the table as a dominant partner in shaping policy to its liking.

At the Environmental Protection Agency and other 70s-era regulatory commissions, he appointed department heads who were enemies of the very mandate they were charged to oversee.  He scrapped a billion-dollar program that Jimmy Carter had funded to develop workable alternatives to America's dependence on foreign fossil fuels.  He refrained from enforcing laws he disagreed with, including those that punished employers for hiring illegal immigrants.  He set the stage for the disregard of Congressional authority that reached its climax in the Imperial Presidency of the younger George Bush, who successfully claimed a raft of impeachable offenses as "policy differences."  The litany of Reaganesque shortsightedness, and its long-range detrimental impact, was a grievous cut to the idealism of my generation, and a mortgage on the hopes of the next.

The Reagan counterrevolution — call it the "Reagan Regression" — defined the experience of the next twenty-eight years. The presidencies of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton were significantly determined by their efforts to correct and moderate Reaganite excess.  But no candidate or President who came after would openly oppose him in principle; and the second Bush took Reagan's legacy as his rightful inheritance, carrying it to extreme, devastating fulfillment.

But it was a detour that has run its course.  Reaganism has been repudiated at the ballot box.

To take just one point: there's a prevailing view among economists that the Wall Street meltdown has deep roots in the deregulation policies of the Reagan administration.  Voters emphatically rejected McCain's determination to continue advancing that philosophy; and to the extent that the financial implosion motivated the electorate, it's an indication that Reaganomics as an ideology is over.

Obamanomics is a different species altogether.  Reregulation is now the watchword of the day.  It's not a question of whether, but how much and in what form.  Current policy discussions are notably lacking in ideas of any substance, but there are underlying assumptions no one is talking about; and they are clearly contrary to the Reagan Regression.

The new consensus recognizes that the unlevel playing field is as unhealthy for the elite as it is crushing for those with new ideas and initiative; and the needs of those at the bottom are not less important than the rights of those at the top.  Education, health care, environmental protection and maintenance of infrastructure are essential services to society.  Governmental interference may produce some abuses; but the abdication of governmental responsibility unleashes forces of ravaging destructiveness.

Obama faces a sober task of overcoming so many mistakes and violations of the covenant of government that he will ultimately, even if it's not his temperament, have to endow us with a new set of principles and doctrines to succeed.  If, that is, he's going to succeed at all, he'll have to get beyond the appearance of always reeling from one crisis to the next, one emergency bailout to another.

Then are we seeing the fulfillment, in some symbolic sense, of the 60s youth movement?  Can we say, the Revolution is at hand?  The march of civil rights has waltzed into the White House on a platform of ending an unpopular war.  The chutzpah of Reagan and the hubris of Bush have pockmarked the landscape with devastation; and as the haze clears, and the flood recedes, we reach toward a healing vision that has deep roots in the 1960s.  What has endured, and even prospered, in the image of lifting our nation on a green economy, comes straight from the whispering of Charles Reich, "as April's green endures."

If there's any validity to his promise, Obama will preside over a transformation of American culture unlike anything we've seen in recent memory.  It is a Counter-Counterrevolution. Still near the outset, I feel the presence of the past in all our doings.  I see decisions being made that are influenced by legacies, inheritances coming to fruition, and longstanding issues that are coming to the fore.  I see the arcing movement of things that trace from the periphery to the center: things that were not important before, now thrust forward in a changed context; things that were always important, but didn't have enough momentum or recognition to make waves; some things that once were too painful or contentious to get through a blockade. With the passage of time, wounds heal, sanity prevails, and importance is clarified.  Momentum coalesces.

But again like the 1960s, there is a radicalized segment of society professing resistance to the dominant trend.  This time, it comes from the political right, not the left; and its essential character is not a revolt against repression but an unwillingness to let go of entrenched power.  It is a minority seeking to fracture the integrity of a mainstream consensus, not a liberating movement with wide sympathy facing denial by an elite. Comparison would show less similarity than inversion of the situations then and now, with every shoe being on the other foot; but the mix may be no less volatile.

The spirit of the times entices us with a new thinkability on the horizon, a willingness to believe that the next generation will witness an entirely different, and hopefully better experience than the one we've just seen. But rising social antagonisms, including racially-charged divisions, in a time of economic downturn, amid intensifying political strife, are already evoking extremes of strain.

So I am reaching out with fingertips' intelligence, one small voice amid the chorus that comes at you from all directions.  To the many who have ears, who already know the tune; to a Rainbow Nation, and Rainbow Children yet to hear the call: the poet says, awaken.

Our song is what the world needs now.