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I feel like Obama in a way. His idea that hope means not shrinking from a fight; it's the courage to reach for something. My music is that. Those are principles I try to embody.

Barack Obama may have found the answer to his biggest rhetorical challenge: When millions of voters are unemployed or underemployed, how does a president simultaneously sound realistic and optimistic?

You would have to say his number one accomplishment has been to inspire a sense of confidence in the country. That confidence, that optimism, not only gives President Obama a political cushion, but it could have a real world economic impact.

For a guy who believes in hope, Obama doesn't seem to be able to spread much of it around. How can he? We know too much now about the hollowness of institutions and the frailty of their leaders.

I wish President Obama had succeeded because I want America to succeed. But his promises gave way to disappointment and division. This isn't something we have to accept. Now is the moment when we can do something. With your help we will do something.

Obama won the presidency on the strength of his message and the skills of the messenger. Now the talk of hope and change feels out of tune when so many Americans are out of work, over-mortgaged, and worried that life will be even tougher for their children.

I was like everyone else when Obama was elected - optimistic.

Obama was elected on a slogan of hope and change because both were in short supply: the military exhausted by two wars, the banks failing their public trust, the U.S. Congress a comedy of dysfunction, and a federal government that seemed designed to idle on the sidelines.

All non-incumbent campaigns promise hope and change, but Obama took the promise to a new level of absurdity. He suggested that a vote for him would literally transform the Earth.

Obama learned from Ronald Reagan that it helps to strike an optimistic tone. But genuine optimism deriving from American exceptionalism, it turns out, does not come naturally to him.