This outpouring was not just because a man of African descent was elected President of the United States. Something a lot deeper than that was going on.

Yesterday I gave a speech to 500 high school kids in Seattle. The 20 minute speech was about service and selflessness, about working hard and taking risks to solve public problems. I told those kids that they would add meaning to their own lives by making life better for others.

I hit a chord with that speech. Those kids leaned forward in their chairs. They listened. Afterwards they cheered.

Driving home, I realized that what I’d just told those teenagers was what was missing in the national debate on the bailout. No offense to this country’s leadership, but some things are just true at any age. How did we get into this mess except by the near-absence of a concept of working for the common good?

In Berlin last week, Barack Obama told 200,000 people that partnerships were the only way to solve complex problems like terrorism and global warming. Framed against the skies of the Berlin Airlift, the partnership that won the first battle of the Cold War, Obama restated the obvious. Yet the oratorical swoops and cadences that we’ve come to expect from this gifted man again made the issue real and pressing.

As a 65 year-old white man, I thought I “got” Barack Obama’s celebrated speech on race when he gave it. But I didn’t. Not until yesterday, when a black stranger walked into the changing room at the gym I go to on South Whidbey Island, Washington. The man commented on my new cowboy boots and asked me if I rode. We got to talking and he said he worked with show horses.

Good for them.