If you will allow me a personal moment, I will say the following: I prayed today, in my role as a supplicant before God on the first day of the Jewish New Year, not only for my family and my people and all mankind, but also for my country-which, I declare in unison with Abraham Lincoln, indeed is “the last best hope of earth.”

Besides prayer, another good move in times like these is to get outside of the Beltway.

I did that the other day, when I flew to Mississippi for the first presidential debate. America’s troubles and challenges do not look so bleak or insoluble when viewed from a place where people talk slow, the land matters, and profits depend on making or growing things, or, as at Ole Miss, on educating a hopeful new generation.

I’m thinking about all of this-about renewal, real life and new beginnings-as I consider the state of the presidential race, which I have been covering for close two years. As I do so I can see where Barack Obama is coming from-if not where he is going to.