WASHINGTON -- "Voters pick the guy with the sun in his face." That's how American pundit and talk show host Chris Matthews puts it.

It's a truism of politics in a democracy that inclusive optimism usually wins. But it's especially on point in the United States, a country that defines itself as the home of fresh starts and reinvention.

President Ronald Reagan won re-election in 1984 by declaring that it was "Morning in America again." George H.W. Bush won four years later by vowing to create a "kinder, gentler" country. Bill Clinton defeated him in 1992 by saying, "I still believe in a place called Hope" -- which, conveniently, was the name of his childhood home in Arkansas.

And after the dark, divided years of George W. Bush's presidency, an obscure senator from Illinois won the presidency in 2008 with a campaign summarized by a now-iconic poster that had just one word: HOPE.