People have spoken and written much about how President Barack Obama’s plans for dealing with America’s domestic and foreign challenges will change America. Liberals and social progressives tend to see them as a blueprint for a kinder, gentler America with “social justice” at home and greater harmony with friends and allies abroad. Conservatives tend to see them as leading the country down the path toward socialism and away from America’s preeminent leadership role in world affairs. I see an America of diverse peoples and interests in pursuit of the American dream that has and will continue to change from the bottom up.

Great leaders have made a difference in American history. Many of them have been US presidents. But when you stop and think about the fabric of America, what makes us different, what Alexis de Tocqueville called American exceptionalism, you realize that the principal engine of change in America has not been our politicians but the people, faith, and ideas from whence they came and the events that shaped them.

America was founded by an enlightened, if slave owning, European gentry with more faith in God and their fellow citizens than in kings and princes. It was populated by upper, middle, and working class people from Europe and around the world who came to America and worked hard to secure a better life for themselves and for their posterity. With guns, germs, and steel and a belief in Manifest Destiny, we took this great land that is now the United States from Native Americans. Through hard work, no less than 13 major wars, and much social upheaval we built a country that became the envy of the world.

Along the way we changed. President Abraham Lincoln held the country together with a bloody and bitter Civil War, and by signing the Emancipation Proclamation he freed the slaves. But it was the American people over the next hundred years, black and white, in and out of government, and the civil rights movement of the 1960s that gave it lasting meaning and changed American attitudes on race.

Wilsonian idealism and America’s involvement in World War I laid the groundwork for America’s development in the 20th Century and emergence as a world power. But it was women suffragettes who marched in the streets and the men who fought in World War I that in 1920 gave women the right to vote. The right to vote didn’t make women equal. That took American women decades more of hard work, and they're still pursuing it.

Franklin D. Roosevelt led America during the Great Depression--he gave us the New Deal and Social Security--and he led us to the eve of victory during World War II. But it was the millions of Americans who returned from the war that gave America its sense of international responsibility, its willingness to lead free peoples everywhere, and laid the foundation for social and political changes yet to come, not all of which were consistent with Roosevelt's vision of America.

Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan led us through the Cold War. Ronald Reagan brought it to a successful conclusion. It was the American people, however, despite the social trauma the Vietnam War inflicted on America, who stood behind Reagan as he stood up to the Russians. Men and women in offices, factories, and military uniform propelled American technology and military power to heights that the Soviet Union could not reach and, by striving to do so, forced it to collapse.

Victory in the Cold War made the US the world’s sole superpower. Under President George H. W. Bush, a broad-based coalition joined us to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, but after 9/11, when George W. Bush pursued our enemies relentlessly wherever he could find them, then stumbled in Iraq, people called for an American withdrawal from Iraq. We remembered, however, how we treated US troops after the Vietnam War and never waivered in our support of them. The courage and determination of our troops, the "surge," and the support we gave them ultimately gave us victory in Iraq.

Now, the global economic crisis has shaken the foundations of American capitalism and has brought into focus a list of problems that America and the world must deal with.

As people live longer and the birth rate declines, our society is aging, placing unsustainable burdens on our increasingly expensive present health care and Social Security systems.

Our dependence on foreign oil transfers billions of dollars of American wealth to unfriendly foreign governments every year.

The American education system must improve if we are to successfully compete in the 21st century world.

Whatever you believe about climate change, we should be responsible stewards of our environment without destroying the engines of economic growth.

Barack Obama and the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate are proposing plans to deal with these issues that many believe go too far toward a European-style social-democratic government. They're likely to succeed in passing legislation that enacts many of them.

Islamic fundamentalism, nuclear and missile proliferation pose new and ominous threats to America. Globalization, international economic interdependence, and a host of other international problems confront us.

In the United Kingdom last week for the G20 summit, President Obama put a kinder, gentler face on American foreign policy. He indicated he intends to speak softly while carrying a smaller stick. He criticized latent European anti-Americanism but also past American "arrogance." He plans to increase US forces in Afghanistan, but also plans big cuts in US defense programs.