Voters have a real choice this election season between a president who has redirected a country suffering the worst economic times since the Great Depression, including a global financial meltdown, and a Republican ticket that favors draconian cuts in our most popular programs. It's a good time to point out that it is liberals who, time and time again, have been on the right side of history.

 

Conservatives blast the left for not appreciating "American exceptionalism"—even though Barack Obama is the only president to have ever used that phrase, at least in the past eight decades or so. But let's take a moment to explore just what it is that makes us exceptional. It is, very simply, a battle between progress and regress.

 

The last time we hit the economic bottom, Franklin Roosevelt focused on relief, recovery and reform: relief for the poor, recovery from a bad economy, and reform so it wouldn't happen again. The Civilian Conservation Corps put young men to work in rural areas, with the income going to help their families. The men planted trees, built parks and laid down roads...