I want to tell you about a man who came from modest, even humble beginnings, a man who chased the American dream and caught it and wanted everyone to have an equal chance to catch it, too. A man who bore an unjust social stigma because of his minority and immigrant parentage. A man who experienced the sting of bigotry, but channeled those hurts into a personal quest for justice for other victims of injustice. A man of intelligence who excelled as an academic and professor. A man who got his start in politics as a community organizer, helping the underprivileged and disenfranchised find a voice, and rose through the ranks of government to achieve a seat in the U.S. Senate. Though many pundits and advisers told him he had little chance of winning, he contemplated a run for the White House as his ultimate opportunity to bring about progressive change and fundamental fairness to government and public policy. I'm referring, of course, to the late Senator Paul Wellstone.

Sen. Wellstone never made the run for the Oval Office he once considered, but he did share other similarities with President Obama. The most unsettling of them, sadly, has been a propensity to make rookie mistakes. For Wellstone, the first rookie mistake was breaching the protocol of George Herbert Walker Bush by having the audacity, as a newly minted freshman Senator, to expose his liberal agenda in a White House reception line. That was the famous encounter that led President George H.W. Bush, then the titular leader of the free world, to inquire of his neighbor in the reception line, "Who was that chickenshit?"

Never one to hide his liberal activist light under a basket, Wellstone next drew the ire of veterans early in his first term by holding an anti-Persian Gulf War press conference in front of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Republicans (and many conservative Democrats) were outraged and attacked Wellstone as if he were a stray dog that had lifted his leg on motherhood, apple pie, the flag and Lady Liberty. It was a dumb move, another rookie mistake, but one he took to heart and used as a learning experience. The backlash from his ill advised choice of press conference location ignited his interest in veterans' affairs, and Wellstone went on to become one of the most passionate and respected veterans' advocates in Congress, even earning the praise of Senator John McCain.

Fast forward nearly two decades and President Obama, now the leading voice for progressive change in Washington, finds himself embroiled in a series of controversies (some real, some manufactured) that in perspective are little more than rookie mistakes, the kind to be expected of any person in a new, unfamiliar position. But in today's highly charged partisan environment (and ironically right when quick action would be really helpful in overcoming an international economic crisis) very little is kept in perspective, and every step the president and his administration take becomes a tedious, agonizing walk through a political minefield, where every misstep is magnified and repeated ad infinitum through the media echo chamber.

Today the GOP faithful, eager deniers of health care to disabled and disadvantaged children, are hurling invective over President Obama's appearance on The Tonight Show in general and his unfortunate Special Olympics gaffe in particular. For good measure, they are throwing in that he should be dealing with the economy to the exclusion of everything else, especially college basketball prognostication. They have apparently forgotten what it is like to have a president who can walk and chew gum simultaneously. But all of today's bluster is almost a welcome relief after a full week of the hyped up drama that is the AIG bonus snafu. While President Obama's administration has accomplished much in the infancy of its first two months, it has also racked up its share of rookie mistakes.

When Paul Wellstone first arrived in Washington following his 1990 Senate win, he made a key rookie mistake that seriously handicapped his initial effectiveness in the Senate - he eschewed hiring Beltway insiders for his staff in favor of those campaign workers who helped win his Senate seat. But his loyalty to those campaigners, who were brilliant grassroots organizers, had unfortunate and unforeseen consequences. It seems grassroots organizing is a skill of meager utility inside the Washington bubble, and his staff's lack of insider connections essentially isolated Wellstone from the Washington web of influence. Wellstone eventually replaced many of his campaigners with more seasoned and better connected Congressional staffers, at no small political cost in his home state of Minnesota, where the move was criticized as disloyal and cynical. We Minnesotans are funny that way, though.

Fortunately, President Obama does not appear to be repeating this particular mistake. While he has pulled key people from his campaign into his administration, he's also incorporating a sizable share of veterans, people who know Washington and how it works and how to get things done - including former political rivals - and he's assembled an economic advisory team of financial wizards both macro and micro. In a relatively short time they have managed to begin laying the policy groundwork for President Obama's broader agenda for education, energy, health care, and diplomacy, what I like to think of as the American Restoration.

The good beginning is now in jeopardy of being irreparably overshadowed by the rookie mistakes, and the considerable political capital he now holds may begin slipping away unless President Obama is able to make the right adjustments. As dire as the economic situation remains, and as hell-bent on opposition and obstruction as the GOP is, and as adamant about business as usual as Wall Street is, President Obama's staff and Cabinet, indeed the collective resources of the executive branch, may not be enough to overcome the challenges we now face. For that President Obama needs more help than he can find in Chicago or Washington, D.C. For that he needs the people, from sea to shining sea. For that he needs a movement of involved, concerned citizens, the kind that got him into the White House in the first place, and the kind Senator Wellstone praised with these words at Iowa State University more than a decade ago, words that could have come as easily from an Obama stump speech:

" I do not believe the future will belong to those who are content with the present, I do not believe the future will belong to the cynics, or to those who stand on the sideline. The future will belong to those who have passion, and to those grassroots heroes who are willing to make the personal commitment to make our country better.  The future will belong to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. And if together we believe, we can create a movement like that which seized for women the right to vote, like the one that launched the New Deal, like the one that fought the War on Poverty."