Two very different descriptions of the impact of imagination in the U.S. in relation to the presidential election.

The first is from Fouad Ajami, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

America is a different land, for me exceptional in all the ways that matter. In recent days, those vast Obama crowds, though, have recalled for me the politics of charisma that wrecked Arab and Muslim societies. A leader does not have to say much, or be much. The crowd is left to its most powerful possession -- its imagination.

The second comes from Roger Cohen, writing in the New York Times:

Stories require restraint, too. Restraint engages the imagination, which has always been stirred by the American idea, and can be once again.

Me? I tend to the latter. We are free to use our imagination to conjure a better place in our mind and use opportunity to realize our dreams.