As it approaches midnight, I can say it was a good day. It left me feeling uplifted and hopeful, despite all the lousy economic and foreign conflict news. We’ve turned a page, not only on the awful, illegal and corrupt Bush administration, but on an entire ugly chapter in our nation’s history. A black man was sworn in as president today. Even last year at this time, I couldn’t have imagined we’d be able to say such a thing so soon. Obama’s ascension to the presidency makes me proud. I voted for him, putting aside some initial reservations that had nothing to do with the color of his skin. For me his race wasn’t even a consideration, and I think that’s true for many other people as well. In this case the non-factor was as important as all the other factors in making history.
As I watched Obama’s speech, my impression was that he wasn’t speaking to the millions massed on the mall in front of him, or even the hundreds of millions watching on TV. He was speaking to history. Watching the dissections of the speech tonight, I think I was half-right. Unlike a lot of people I know, I’ve never been blown away by Obama’s oratory. He can deliver a good speech, for sure, but I think a certain amount of the praise being directed his way is rooted in the reality that the most recent president was a functional illiterate who understood even less about grammar and sentence construction than he did about warfare and foreign policy.
We have, in a sense, been crawling through a rhetorical desert these past eight years. Obama is offering us a glass of water, but to us that glass looks like a swimming pool.
I felt today’s speech meandered, hitting a lot of themes and using a lot of code dressed up in rhetorical flourish. Reflecting further over a bottle of Lagunitas Brewing Brown Shugga and the tones of the Dixie Chicks and Muddy Waters, it occurs to me that hitting a lot of themes and using code and flashy imagery is what inaugural addresses are historically about. With some notable exceptions they are speeches to history, not to people.
Reading through the speech again, I think many of the words were right. It was a better mix of plain speaking and lofty ideas than I remember as I stood there next to the reception desk. The speech itself wasn’t great. What made it great, and what will make it great for generations, was the man delivering it, and the circumstances surrounding its delivery. Watching Obama take the oath of office, and the reaction of the flag-waving millions, did bring a lump to my throat. That’s history, bubba, a real “where-were-you-when?” moment – the second in three months involving the same guy. I was moved.
I did snort-laugh when Obama thanked George W. Bush for his “service to our nation.” A few of my colleagues turned around, but I didn’t care. Thanking Bush for his service is like thanking Bernard Madoff for being a careful steward of your finances, or Jeffrey Dahmer for watching the kids. Some might say that latter comparison is too harsh for a man who, after all, did spend eight years of his life as president, and who appears to have aged much more than those eight years. Regardless, Bush’s era came to an appropriate close, amid two wars—one illegal, a crumbling constitution, the worst financial and economic crises since the Great Depression and everywhere the destructive signs of unchecked greed and hubris that started before Bush took office but that he and his ilk fostered. Obama got his digs in, though. His subtlety will be debated, but among my friends the appropriateness of his comments will not.
“… we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.
“Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.
“We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort -- even greater cooperation and understanding between nations.”
The camera cut to Bush at one point, and I’m pretty sure he was wincing. I saw on the news that when Bush landed in Texas, before Obama had even finished walking the parade route from the Capitol to the White House, he proclaimed his return to the Lone Star State and vowed never again to leave. Too bad for Texas, but the rest of America hopes he keeps that promise.
Tomorrow Obama will wake up and confront the ugly mess before him. Generally I believe he grasps the difficulties ahead. Sometimes, though, I wonder. Take this line from the inaugural speech: “Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the fainthearted—for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.”
Um, sure it has. Shortcuts and settling for less—that’s why we have the schlocky suburban wastelands polluting our urban fringes, that’s why we prefer to lay down ribbons of asphalt in service to the ubiquitous automobile rather than laying down rail lines or planning more bus routes and it’s why greedmongers and wing-tip hustlers like Bernie Madoff have dominated the headlines of late. There are more of them to come, not all of them outright criminals like Madoff, but all of them accountable for serving themselves above anyone else. I predict many more of them will choose suicide instead of facing up to what they’ve done. That’s how these people are—when things are going well they are the masters of the universe. When fortunes turn they are revealed to have no character and no guts. Fuck them … the trouble being of course that they’ve already fucked us.
At any rate, I was writing about Obama and the inauguration. For one day, anyway, I felt hope and change were possible, and embodied in one man. I thought, maybe we can begin to undo the damage of the past eight years.
Obama can never live up to the expectations the world has put on him. In that respect he is doomed to fail before he even starts. But I think if he goes down, Obama will go down swinging, and in the end that may be his most inspirational act. It may be the thing that drives the rest of us on.I know this: With all due respect to Natalie Maines and the Dixie Chicks, tonight I am proud to say the President of the United States is from Illinois.
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