Dear Mr. President,

It is likely that you don’t remember me. I was one of 3,000 black journalists who packed a Las Vegas ballroom in 2007. Few of us, I admit, believed you could win the democrat primary, let alone the presidency. The dream was too lofty, too hard to imagine. Too many things and too many people stood in the way. Where would you get the money, the volunteers? Who would get behind a guy with big, funny ears and an even funnier name? Iowa, we thought, is where this thing will begin and end. He’ll never see the other side of Michigan.

“We can change the math in Washington,” you promised that morning. I’ve heard a lot of good speeches in my day. But there was something about you that I simply could not shake. Even if I thought you couldn’t win, I was glad to see you on the stage. We’d be better off, I told a friend later, if there were dozens more like you on city councils, in state houses and in Congress. Wouldn’t it be nice if a guy like that actually made it to the White House?

Back then to hear cable news pundits tell it, you were just an overly ambitious, naive junior senator from Illinois. Your election, they said, was a fluke. They said you didn’t have the experience to run the country, didn’t have enough time in Washington, and, candidly, you weren’t the “establishment” candidate. And well, you were black. Nobody, not even the rows of African American journalists in that room, wanted to bet on a losing horse — no matter how beautiful his coat. We didn’t want to get our hopes up.

In time, millions of Americans from every walk of life came to see you as our best and brightest light beaming from a hill. You beckoned us toward something greater than we had known. You surely won’t recall, but we met again at a private dinner in Atlanta the following July. We spoke briefly about a close mutual friend, musing about his recent wedding. By then, defying conventional wisdom, you had secured the nomination. “This is our moment,” I said then. “We cannot afford to miss it.”

The campaign is over now, and you’ve been in the White House for nearly three years. The change we hoped for, the change we counted on, hasn’t come. I suppose we’ve been too caught up, inebriated in the liquor of hope, in the glory of our own gallop toward a post-racial America awash with prosperity. Maybe, we had a little too much milk and honey.

In our stupor, we didn’t account for the rise of unmasked bigotry that would sweep across the land, the briar-strewn valleys of darkness, the rocky avenues laden with misplaced fear and unchecked ignorance. We didn’t account for the wave of bitterness and hatred that cloaked itself in noble patriotism. And far worse, too many of us were all too willing to sit on our hands in silence when we should have been on our feet, waving our proverbial clinched fists and shouting.

We allowed “The Great Coming Together”, that mighty stream of humanity, to be over-taken with a tidal wave of hyper-partisanship fueled by public interest lobby groups who have anything but the public interest in mind. We were satiated with our own beauty, our courage to elect the first Black president, and paid little notice to the ugliness, taking root at our feet.

Mr. President, you told us we were better. In fact, you begged us to be. “We are not as divided as our politics suggest,” you said. Unfortunately, for too many of us on the left and the right, it’s still about “them” and “me”, rather than “us” and “we.”

But you never stopped believing, did you? “We are tougher than the times that we live in,” you said in last week’s Joint Session Congressional address. And despite the glaring absence of some members, you said, “And we are bigger than our politics have been.”

I want to believe you. However, in the face of the worst economic downturn in modern times and as the threat of a global recession looms, it pains me to think that we may not be the country you believe we are.

If we are honest with ourselves, really honest, then we will stop chucking blame over the White House fence or even at a do-nothing Congress and take some for ourselves. Only then will we realize that sending you to Washington — though well intentioned — was never enough. That even for your grace under fire, changing the political math will require more than we have been willing to give. It’s easy to accuse you of giving away too much at the bargaining table with people who have no intention of letting the hostages out of the building unscathed. But it’s just as easy to blame Congress, when the truth is we sent them there — all 535 of them. Democrat, republican, Tea Party and no-party, they belong to us — bought and paid for by our checkbook of disillusioned apathy. We are reaping the bounty of our malaise.

If Congress cannot find a way to negotiate and pass a meaningful version of the American Jobs Act, one that invests in small business, puts people back to work and does not add to our exploding deficit, then we start printing 535 pink slips. In fact, I think we should begin issuing “separation warning notices” in the form of our collective activism. Americans should not have to live in fear that Congress will waste this opportunity to do something substantial. Congress should fear our wrath if they don’t.

Until we are prepared to jam the phone lines, stuff some envelopes and show up en mass at their offices, they’ll keep believing they can get away with political posturing. Until we are ready to empty some seats, they will continue to shun bi-partisanship. If we let them forget who they work for, they will steadfastly refuse to reform entitlements and clear the tax code of lucrative loopholes. They’ll keep kicking this empty can down the road.

Let it be said that I certainly do not always agree with your policy agenda. My mother will readily attest to my willingness to question even the sunrise. However, there is something intrinsically wrong about cheering you onto the battlefield, when we ourselves aren’t willing to join you. If we keep our proverbial seats, Congress won’t have to do anything to keep theirs.

The old adage is right: In a democracy, we get the government we deserve. If we want better, we have to be better.

Mr. President, you were right. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.