By Donna Brazille, Syndicated columnist The Picayune Item The
imagery of Carl Sandburg’s poem “Fog” always surprises me: The
fog comes/on little cat feet./It sits looking/over harbor and
city/on silent haunches/and then moves on. Such a short poem,
and yet each time I read it, it resonates differently. After the
election, I began thinking about change — what has really
changed in four years, what change may yet come, what “change”
really means. And I was reminded of Sandburg’s “Fog.”
Immediately after a prolonged contest, it’s often hard to see
what, if anything, has changed, for change comes slowly,
increment by increment. But what always precedes policy change
is a change in attitude. Prior to the Civil War, for instance,
Congress debated laws that enforced slavery. And in the war’s
immediate aftermath, the only apparent change was the silence of
cannons. The devastation of cities and farms remained. Yet eight
months — to the day — after Lee surrendered to Grant, the 13th
Amendment, the first amendment pass