Earlier this month, explaining how the fierce-urgency-of-now became the intense-need-for-patience, President Obama effectively blamed the system - not him and his big ideas. Speaking on August 3 to a DNC event in Chicago, he said:

When I said, "change we can believe in," I didn't say "change we can believe in tomorrow."  (Laughter.)  Not "change we can believe in next week."  We knew this was going to take time, because we've got this big, messy, tough democracy.

Technically, he was correct. He did not say change "tomorrow" or "next week" - he said "right now." In his New Hampshire primary speech - the one immortalized in the "yes we can" video - he asserted change is "what's happening in America right now." The night he effectively won the nomination, he told the crowd it was a "defining moment for our nation"; a "moment that will define a generation"; a "moment when … the rise of the oceans began to slow." In virtually every speech, the moment was "now." The change he was talking about was electing him; he was not simply the man from Hope, but Hope itself - the one-word slogan below his picture.