I've got mixed feelings about this changing of the guard. On the one hand, I feel as so many others do, that 2009-01-20 is like 1974-08-09 - "our long national nightmare is over." There is so much hope in this country today, and from that hope springs great potential for action. The President's inaugural address was on point, an excellent reminder of both the massive challenges we face and the greater resources we have to tackle them. Perhaps the most heartening line from the speech is Obama's promise to strive for an accountable government, and one that sheds sunlight, "the best disinfectant," on the shadows of the past eight years.
At the same time, I can't help shake the feeling that it may not be "morning in America," as it so clearly was twenty-eight years ago. The "sapping of confidence" recalls President Carter's July 1979 "crisis of confidence" or "malaise" speech, and Carter isn't remembered fondly for that one. The President's record as a Senator (the most liberal of the hundred in that chamber), combined with the heavy blue majorities at both ends of the Capitol, lend me to believe we're headed toward classical Democratic ideology - and that damned near means socialism. Perhaps the most common misconception (perhaps even deceit) of the past three-quarters of a century is that America is a small-"d" democracy. It's a small-"r" republic - one where the government's power is limited, the sphere of individual of liberty is maximized. It's one where we pursue a foreign policy in the spirit of our first and sixth Presidents - the extension of commerce and friendly relations with all nations, coupled with a steadfast refusal to "go abroad in search of monsters to destroy." To be sure, those pillars have been torched and burned over the last eight years, almost beyond recognition. Though Barack Obama seems intent on restoring our image abroad, I can't help but wonder if we're staring straight at the "ant heap" about which Reagan warned us in 1964.
No matter your views on the Presidency just concluded or that just begun, we can all take solace and be thankful that the transition was historically smooth, and that the will of our great Constitution was done - now for the fifty-sixth consecutive time. To Lincoln's question - "Is there any better way or equal hope in the world?" - we confirm again that there absolutely is not. We can now get down to the business of carrying out the President's charge...and watching the drama across our northern border, where Monday next, the Harper government could topple barely three months after its renewed mandate. It makes me glad our hoopla is all said and done...