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What else can we talk about this week besides the Obama-quake in Washington? Regardless of our politics, we know that it represents a seismic shift in political attitudes.
The President’s inaugural speech will wear well and be quoted more in the future than most such pronouncements. He was inspiring by not trying to be inspirational. He faced the hard facts of adversity and called us to action.
Calming the partisan waters by urging us to look ahead rather than backward, the 47-year-old President even hung his hat on a bygone musical score by rousing us to “pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”
There was something for everybody, left and right. For the conservatives, he promised to set the bar for “a new era of responsibility.” For those demanding change he assured them that the question is “not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.”
Yes, he pledged again that he intends to be the change-agent he has promised, at one point inveighing against “worn-out dogmas” and at another declaring “the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.” In these dictums we hear Abraham Lincoln’s own words in his Second Inaugural Address: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.”
Throughout all this historic event, Obama endeavored to link both his persona and his words to those of Lincoln and bask in the reflected glory of “Honest Abe.” Isn’t it remarkable that he had to reach back 150 years to find an honest politician from Illinois?

–Vic Jose

Vic Jose :: Jan.22.2009 :: Uncategorized ::

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