Here in the Mid-Atlantic the landscape is changing. Its mid-fall and the high summer rainbow of colors that had painted the countryside a kaleidoscope of yellows and purples, blues and pinks is now a circumspect canvas of wine sap reds and pumpkin oranges as the grey winter fast approaches. Yet, if one looks beneath the fallen leaves one can find a touch of green here and another there as the past holds on reluctant to give way to the future.

The changing season is symbolic of the nation’s political landscape as one presidency comes to an end and another prepares for its future. Until Inauguration Day, America lives in political purgatory. Hungry for change and yet forced to wait for the official start of her new beginning, America is saddled with a lame duck President, George W. Bush, who will remain in power for 69 more days, and waits diligently for the investiture of number 44, President Barack Obama.

Some transitions are more difficult than others. This change of power seems more painful than most. America is in freefall. The economy has tanked, people are losing their jobs and their homes at record rates,  the health care system is in shambles, there’s that pesky little war in Iraq to worry about, and an industry once the bedrock of American ingenuity whose home is in Detroit, the big engines that could but now cannot, is imploding before our very eyes.

Can January 20, 2009 come too soon?

All eyes are focused on that hope-filled day when change will come. It will be winter. Imagine Washington D.C. blanketed with an emblematic virgin snow. The sky will turn a cerulean blue; the golden sun will kiss the top of the Capitol dome. Barack Obama will be sworn into office and we can believe again.

But wait, not so fast.

For the truth is change is coming, but when, how much, how fast, and will the change be the right kind of change to bring America back to its glory days?

I don’t envy the position the new president will find himself in on January 21, 2009. The whole world will be watching Barack Obama. They have put their money on the relatively young and mightily inexperienced Senator from the Land of Lincoln to right the wrongs of the last eight years. Obama offered not only the nation hope, but the world, too. Follow him he implored us. I represent change you can believe in.

But it is probably true that only God can bring the kind of change this country needs in a fast enough pace to satisfy the disenchanted. Unfortunately, Americans are an impatient lot and as the old saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

Missing from Obama’s lofty campaign rhetoric were real answers to the problems America faces. In his speeches he was quick to point out the problems and to offer paltry solutions. But myriad solutions have been around for decades. Missing has been bipartisanship. Can Obama solve our core American problem?

Effectively, we are two Americas: the Republican brand of America and the Democratic Party brand of America. And never the twain seems to meet. Will Obama be able to bring the two sides together? He was elected by a better than 50 percent margin because even some of the opposition is disgusted with the fractured American government. Twenty-five percent of white evangelical Republicans voted for Barack Obama.

Not a part of any discussion in this long, two year national dialogue on what the country needs is the lack of American ingenuity. Where once this country led the world in innovation we are now a nation of followers. Green came to Europe long before it became part of our discourse. The Europeans made the appropriate adjustments to rising gas prices and moved to economically prudent cars long ago. Even Brazil beat us in the arena of alternative fuels. Our educational system hasn’t been producing inventive children for decades. We manufacture virtually nothing here. The United Kingdom and Canada moved on universal health care what seems like eons ago. In other words, what has become of the brain trust that built this great land?

Our legislators can argue in Congress from here to eternity, but the kind of solutions being talked about to save the fabric of this once pioneering nation are Band-Aids to the problem. What becomes a pioneering nation suffering from a lack of originality?

Even Obama’s campaign was nothing but a redux of the campaigns run by George McGovern and John Kennedy back in the Sixties.

It is considered bad form to suggest our problems lie not only in bad corporate management, greedy banks, and selfish politicians hungry for power. To say something is wrong with the American brain is unseemly.

But there is something wrong with our thinking. Once ordered, it appears we are a nation of the disordered. How many American’s take drugs for attention deficit disorder? Once confident, a lack of certitude is now epidemic. Once thoughtful, who has time to think in the fast-paced lives most American’s lead? Could it be that all that effort to achieve the American Dream has left us fat and lethargic from too much of the good life, exhausted from too little sleep in search of our dreams, lost in a miasma of trivial pursuit?

Perhaps what we need as a nation is not only a new administration. Maybe what we need is to regroup, slow down, heave a collective sigh, and reprioritize what is important in life…stop and smell the roses. For most Americans that in and of itself would be a huge change, and maybe just the medicine this country needs to get itself back on track.

America, it’s time to think.