“Change we can believe in.” That was then, this is now…

THAT WAS THEN QUOTE: “Change we can believe in.”        Presidential candidate Barack Obama        Campaign slogan, 2008

THIS IS NOW COUNTERQUOTE: “I campaigned on the promise of change – change we can believe in, the slogan went…I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I can do it alone. Democracy in a nation of three hundred million people can be noisy and messy and complicated. And when you try to do big things and make big changes, it stirs passions and controversy.”        President Barack Obama        State of the Union Address, Jan. 27, 2010

THAT WAS THEN PUNDIT QUOTE: “It was certainly something that made people THINK…OK, obviously this guy is offering change but, ‘we can believe in’…what does that mean? And for a lot of people that meant he’s not from the Washington gestalt so he might have the ability to bring about change.”         Obama campaign advisor David Plouffe        On C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” show, Nov. 6, 2009

THIS IS NOW PUNDIT COUNTERQUOTE: “On the eve of the first anniversary of President Obama’s inauguration, it’s become painfully obvious that elected officials are not going to save us...The power of special interests to thwart meaningful change — often by co-opting the rhetoric of change but producing in its name a further consolidation of the status quo — has never been stronger.”         Political pundit Arianna Huffington        Comment on her Huffington Post blog, Jan. 18, 2010

VOTER COUNTERQUOTE: “Scott Brown: Change We Can Afford”        Campaign sign made by a supporter of Scott Brown,        the Massachusetts Republican elected to fill Ted Kennedy’s        Massachusetts Senate seat on Jan. 19, 2010