Already fading in the news, John McCain’s hesitation in answering just how many homes he and his wife own gave Joe Biden and Barack Obama a chance to make inroads with American voters who dream of owning just one home.

I am one of those Americans.

My father bought our house on that gravel road, in rural southern Michigan, for twenty-five thousand dollars. I was a just a kid at the time we moved in, and I remember running from room to room shouting into empty closets and up at ceilings that seemed enormously beyond my reach as my voice echoed off the walls. This was our house, no more renting, it was ours. The inroads attempted by Barack Obama and Joe Biden caused me to pause and think, quite literally, of the road that I have traveled from that house to this apartment. The road is in fact in me.

One of the single greatest thoughts, occupying many pensive moments every day, is how I will afford a home for my son and myself. Where will we live? Many who have homes have the same thought as the prospect of losing their house becomes real. In this apartment complex there are many who can’t think beyond making this months’ rent. Several I have spoken with have lived here for decades and have no hope to ever owning a home. Decades. It seems unreal.

I don’t believe either presidential candidate will deliver the type of change I hope for. I don’t think a President McCain can move this country decidedly toward energy independence or that a President Obama will be successful in truly recalibrating the tax burden to more equitably shift a higher tax on those who are positioned in our society to best afford it. I don’t believe, but I do hope.

I hope for integrity and strength of conviction in our political leaders to believe in the ingenuity of American leadership. I hope for the woman or man who will see the need for dynamic change in energy production and consumption in the United States to be tantamount with the need for security on our borders, at our ports and in our skies. I hope for leadership politically at all levels to point directly at debt - both personal and national - as a crushing burden that will cause this great nation to bend and bow to stronger economic powers overseas if nothing is done to reverse and reduce our obligations. That means you, that means me, that means government consisting of those we elect to serve. I hope for someone, many, to have the audacity to look down at our waistlines, and those of our children, and say “this is wrong, this is not excusable or acceptable, and we must change.”

I hope for these things, and so much more.