Chris Satullo: Obama is better-equipped to lead country through change it craves

Still undecided?

If you're a Pennsylvania Democrat and today dawned with you still struggling, it could mean one of several things:

You could be one of those terminally indecisive people, for whom even ordering at Applebee's becomes an hour-long agony.

More likely, it means you're an earnest citizen who feels how momentous this choice is - but not a person who can resolve it through identity politics, the tug of "first woman" or "first black."

Perhaps you're a substance maven whose study of wonky Web sites has taught you that, along the grand spectrum of political thought, the differences between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama can be measured in microns.

Or, maybe, Barack and Hillary (and, after six weeks, we Pennsylvanians are on a first-name basis) have come to strike you as pushy houseguests who overstayed their welcome. Their bickering and bombarding ads have left you equally annoyed with each.

Whatever the root of your indecision, let me as a fellow citizen share the thought that decided my own mind. Today, I'm going to push the pad that lights up Barack Obama's name. I'm going to do this though concerned he may be a little callow for the job; though put off by his self-righteous pouting at the last debate; though respectful of Hillary Clinton's smarts and superb service as a senator; though unsure who has the best chance of winning in the fall; though aware how much a Clinton win would mean to the person whose opinion I value most in the world, my wife's.

Here's what it comes down to: Clinton and Obama have different understandings of what it will take to lead America in 2009 and beyond. And I prefer Obama's.

Think back to one of the first tit-for-tat spats these two had. Before bitter-and-cling. Before Bosnian sniper fire.

To me, this was the most telling dispute of all: In January, talking to a Nevada newspaper, Obama observed that Ronald Reagan "changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, in a way that Bill Clinton did not . . . because the country was ready for it."

The Clinton camp, ever Pavlovian, began howling. Reagan better than Bill Clinton? Heresy! This willful mangling of Obama's meaning churned up so much dust that it obscured what his words implied about his aims.

What Obama said is the stone truth. Ronald Reagan's great accomplishment was to rewrite the underlying narrative upon which Americans rely to explain the world. Whoever frames this narrative will win most debates; anyone else is working uphill.

Today, we still live in Dutch's Wonderland. His narrative still defines the terrain of American politics: It's not the government's money; it's your money. America is the shining city on the hill, the beacon to all nations (thus entitled to protect its interests in any way it chooses). Government isn't the solution; it's part of the problem.

Bill Clinton didn't supplant Reagan's narrative. In his first term, he was reduced to fighting a savvy rear-guard action. In his second term, he might have crafted a new centrist narrative, but squandered the opportunity.

Now, eight appalling years later, the conservative narrative stands exposed, betrayed and exhausted.

Hillary Clinton, however, takes the Reagan terrain as a given. She assumes national politics must forever be the trench warfare, the nasty game of fragile victories measured in inches, that she knew during her husband's administration. She trumpets her superior experience at that game. But experience can scar as well as teach.

Obama, meanwhile, seeks to create a whole new landscape. He feels the political earth moving. He wants to master the tectonics. He wants to shape the narrative that will replace Reagan's crumbling fairy tale.

Clinton assumes a world where one must work tirelessly to cobble together 51 percent support for a few, long-held goals. Obama envisions a movement that - by unleashing the idealistic, inspiring the apathetic, and summoning the voiceless to the table - will create a 60 percent majority that can make old goals unstoppable and new ones possible.

Can Obama pull this off? Is he The One who can heal divisions, enable dreams, yet head off real threats? Or is he just a grandiose novice, who will wilt amid the inevitable cross fire?

I don't know. Neither do you. But I'd rather risk finding out than settle for more years of barbed wire and pointless carnage on Ronald Reagan's exhausted terrain.