The Obama Era Begins
The capital city seemed to shine amid the throngs of hopeful, if cold-weary, onlookers today. It was a bitter and biting cold there, just as it was all along the eastern seaboard. Life seemed to slow for a few hours as history unfolded. The status quo and the change agents stood together amidst the strains of a John Williams-penned composition when, as the stroke of noon came and went, the old president’s term expired and Barack Obama’s term began. It figures that the music was new and that the composer was American, as much as it did that the assembled quartet of musicians reflected the many shades of America. It would have been inconceivable four years ago for a day like this, on a perfectly cold afternoon, to seem so important and nearly magical.
It was the largest transfer of power in history, and it took place while millions watched from the mall near the Capitol–in a city built by slaves and dreamed by a Frenchman. But the transfer of power didn’t just include political and legal powers. Also transferred were two wars, an economic nightmare approaching great depression proportions and the hopes of a nation.
It was as if a scion of destiny had been handed the keys to a nation and, without a beat, had strode triumphantly onto the world stage betraying nothing but the empirical nature of a man whose moment in history could only come now.
His manner was at once severe and reassuring, his posture erect and confident, while everything about him said that here is a man with limitless energy, without the word quit anywhere in his vocabulary. Speaking of vocabulary: Obama is not a man given to the sort of rhetorical flourishes that some of us may have been counting on. The punditry seemed sure that Obama would have a Kennedy-esque “Ask Not…” moment or a Lincolnian flourish somewhere in his speech, but it would have been a farce if it had happened. In crisp invocations of “yes we can” he has inspired millions.
In sharp contrast to Obama was George W. Bush, who sat politely, if somewhat diminished by the history unfolding around him. Surely it dawned on him that he was now the Hoover to Obama’s Roosevelt, or worse the Buchanan to Obama’s Lincoln. How could it be so, he must have wondered at some point during the invocations, poems and songs? Did I really get it so wrong? And what’s this about America being a place for non-believers?
Maybe we can sum up the Bush presidency in a single, perhaps apocryphal anecdote: upon meeting the Democrat leader in the Senate, Tom Daschle, W. is reputed to have said (and I paraphrase): I hope you never lie to me. Perhaps the president’s sole client, The American People, should have made the statement, and not to Daschle, but to the president himself.
To be sure, we cannot blame the troubles of our nation squarely on the shoulders of George W. Bush. It is true that his leadership made inevitable crises much worse; but ultimately, we get the leadership we deserve–a leadership that often reflects our values and our national character. Indeed, though torn between Democrats and Republicans in 2000, it would seem that the choice was no choice at all.
And so, the Obama era has truly begun. His task, a difficult one, awaits him Wednesday morning.
