I started this blog August 19 with the following sentence:
It’s 8:42 a.m, and, already, this neurotic Democrat has heartburn.
What a great distance we have come.
Still, today was not without heartburn.
We had purple tickets to see the inauguration. We stood for two hours on First Street, jammed with people in line, and only moved about twenty or so feet. An ambulance tried to make its way up the street, and then another, driving where there was no space. Eventually, when it seemed we might get trampled, we gave up.
Marcella and I walked up town, to a law office party, several hundred people watching on big screens, with a huge rooftop deck over-looking the inaugural parade route on Pennsylvania Avenue.
I’m standing now in the law office, toes thawing, huge windows over-looking the street. The parade is finally coming into view. Great V’s of police motorcycles, one after the other, flashers turning.
I’m thinking about Obama’s speech.
“Today, I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But I know this America: They will be met.”
We have just inaugurated a president whose speeches require colons.
“To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”
We have a president who extends his hand to those who might not trust us.
“It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.”
We have a president who alludes powerfully to 9-11, yet understands the need to identify today’s urgencies.
“At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:
‘Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alamed at one common danger, came forth to meet it.’ ”
“America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words, with hope and virture, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come.”
We have a president who looks to the lessons of our history and sees, yet again, hope.