The Irony and The Ecstasy: Thoughts on the Presidential Inauguration Of Barack Obama

FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS IS TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE MILESTONE

   Barack Obama being inaugurated as the first African-American President of the United States evokes many streams of thought and feeling deserving consideration by the nation and world facing an era under his leadership; but surely, first must come a deep and heartfelt sense of congratulations to the African American community for the achievement and feeling such an ascent puts into their hearts. As a Jew, I face a world in which the likelihood of my own descendants being able to rise into the highest office in this land seems still far in the distance, so great is the ongoing prejudice against Jewish people, the international misunderstanding of Israel, and the assumption-set similar to the hurdles Catholics faced before John F. Kennedy shattered their previously impassable prejudice barrier. All people of good will can acknowledge the joy the African-American community must feel today.

ELECTION WAS THE OPPOSITE OF DR. KING'S DREAM      Yet, ironically, Obama was not elected fulfilling the stated dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: " ... people judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Obama's percentages of majority in communities of color and young voters were larger than any Presidential candidates except heroes like Washington, Grant, and Eisenhower: men whose executive and command abilities had been proven through terrible wars. Obama has no track record of any kind in executive or military command responsibility to generate such an approval based on his known deeds: he was a first-term senator who began running for President early in his first term. How did such an overtly unproven person with what journalist Eleanor Clift had the courage and perspicacity publicly to call " a scant resumé" obtain such massive approvals as a mostly unknown quantity? The uncomfortable truth, by process of elimination, seems to be - by prejudice. Voters of color appear to have chosen him because he is one of their own, and youth appeared to choose someone who looks more like themselves than their parents or grandparents. The former is called racial prejudice, and the latter, age prejudice. The African American vote went 95% for Obama. Ninety-five percent! (see www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1) And - unless I am missing something, neither being of color (nor being young) has anything to do with ability or character. So, ironically, Obama's acquisition of the Oval Office appears not to have come through fulfillment of Dr. King's famously stated dream, but from the very prejudice mechanism he dedicated his life to undoing: only the target of the prejudice changed. Ironies in this quirky world abound - and this milestone day is no exception.          A MIND IN THE CHAIR    There is, however, a side to Barack Obama's election that I feel is indisputably healthy. After "9-11," there were people from the middle of the USA having expressed the following thought I actually heard spoken in an interview, "Well, this may take them New Yorkers down a peg. Now maybe those East Coasters will be jus' plain folks like us." The middle of America elected George W. Bush – a man with a mind not capable of consistently generating grammatically correct English – to the most powerful office in the world, in great part to show the elite East Coaster Democrats like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton that they think jus' plain folks can do a better job than those Ivy League uppity-ups who think they're so much better than the rest of us. The fact is, with the sole exception of George W. Bush's success at keeping our country safe from a replay of 9-11, it must be acknowledged that most of the requirements of the Presidency were simply beyond him. No criticism can invest a person with abilities they simply do not have. Harry Truman confounded critics of his plain spoken style by showing a political savvy and command ability hitherto not seen in him, but revealed by the office: George W. Bush entered the office with the potential to do the same, but was mostly unable to wrap himself around the bulk of the job. I say this with the profoundest of gratitude for his achievement in securing the nation, and during the election, I felt badly for him that his own party needed to run so far from him due to his low numbers, that they could not say openly and often, "Thank you Mr. President, for keeping us all safe these last seven years." I hope America does find it in its heart eventually to say that particular thank you to George W. Bush in a befitting way.  Now, in Barack Obama, we see a genuinely dynamic mind at work. As a Harvard law school classmate said of him, "Attaining the presidency of the Harvard Law Review is an achievement of intellect and ambition I can scarcely imagine." Take away from Obama what you will, we now have a President who thinks through matters and generates original thought on matters to great degree. The positive potential is that of a President like Thomas Jefferson or John Kennedy: once-in-a-generation combinations of intellect and political ability that inspire confidence. This is balanced by the irony (remember I said they abound), that the Harvard Club of Washington DC basically got us into the Viet Nam War; which Harvard's Robert McNamara who served as Kennedy's Secretary of Defense acknowledged not long ago in a series called "The Fog of War" was a war built greatly on miscalculations. Rene Descartes said, "Where intellect is great, the potential for great error exists also." That said, with the number of crises the world presently faces, it is somewhat cheering to know there is a great mind in the Oval Office; and that the world's problems will have the attention of a profound and capable thinker. Jus' plain folks are not the need of the hour. Extraordinary powers are the order of the day.          UNTESTED    There are, however, many still living editors of the Harvard Law Review walking around, and that achievement did not put them on the short list for Leader of the Free World. If we are honest, we must look at the difference between John McCain and Barack Obama on the level of testedness (sic), and acknowledge that of McCain, we know he would rather put himself into certain torture and possible death rather than do a morally repugnant deed (obtain through political connections his freedom from Vietnamese prison ahead of others who had been there longer). We are not guessing whether McCain has that kind of character because McCain has been genuinely tested, and proven a hero. Obama can lift his arms higher - McCain's soul could not have lifted itself higher. Obama is a rock-star: McCain is a rock, period. He stands at the pinnacle of morality defined by the Messiah from Nazareth, Himself: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his companion." We still know nothing of what Barack Obama can or cannot do, will or will not refuse, when under the most extreme of pressures. America's communities of color and of youth chose to put into the Presidency one of their own whose nature in the arenas of battle command and moral fortitude is a complete blank. We must simply have the audacity to hope that in addition to eloquence and political aptitude, there exists strong bedrock character in the man. As of now, we simply do not know.     WOMEN AGAIN MUST WAIT    Black men got the right to vote some eighty years before women did. In this past election, Hillary Clinton started out with a momentum of some twenty years building to be the shoo-in Democratic candidate. A woman obviously capable of the job, 2008 was going to be the year women broke the glass ceiling in gender prejudice and saw a woman as the Leader of The Free World. And then came Barack Obama; and again, women learned that the world is more ready to enfranchise men of any color than women. My heart genuinely went out to Hillary Clinton's supporters, who must have watched with absolute bewilderment as the momentum of two decades drained away and their brilliant, long-serving sister was made to take a back seat to the charismatic newcomer representing the hopes of another community seeking the fullest measure of enfranchisement America has to offer – the Oval Office. The heroines of the Suffrage Movement must be, in eternity, nodding their heads in maternal comfort to Hillary and her crew, saying, "Our time will come. Do not give up hope." Hillary's acceptance of the post of Secretary of State actually sets her up well for a second run at the Oval Office, if her health holds up for the next eight years. With the premiere international statesmanship responsibility in the land added to her considerable legal mastery and domestic issue portfolio, she will be an even stronger candidate for the Presidency than before. Only time will tell. Although I have been less than a fan of the woman, I acknowledge this Yalie always does her homework, and I will be surprised if she does less than a stellar job in her new role.     SUCCESS TO OUR NEW COMMANDER IN CHIEF    I wish our new President all the success in the world. I am on his side. He is, by law, our President: he is my President, too. I rejoice in the broken barriers his election betokens, embedded ironies notwithstanding; and I affirm and take some significant comfort from the gifts he brings to the office. I am on his side. I sincerely pray for his success and well-being.    However - I do so with my eyes wide open - and with an unsurrendered perception of nuance in a world very seldom monolithically made of black or white. 20 January 2009