Fernando Gros

Feelings About Obama’s Inauguration

Last night I stayed up to watch Obama’s inaug­ur­a­tion as the 44th Pres­id­ent of the United States of Amer­ica. It’s one of those global asym­met­ries;, I can recall watch­ing (or tuning into exten­ded high­lights) of a number of these down the years — although I’ve never lived in Amer­ica. Read­ing some com­ments from con­ser­vat­ive Chris­ti­ans in the US, it seems they didn’t even bother to tune in, or at least watch care­fully the inaug­ur­a­tion of their own pres­id­ent, even as some of us many miles away fought to stay awake in the small hours to catch a glimpse of history.

Obvi­ously Obama’s speech was the centrepiece. Much has been writ­ten already about the way he weaved together themes of col­lect­ive action and per­sonal respons­ib­il­ity. It was not high rhet­oric, but it was noble nonetheless.

Also, much has already been made of Obama’s stark and blunt revoc­a­tion of the Bush administration’s ideal­ism and moral perfidy.

Real­ism, in the sense of being attent­ive to real­ity, is per­haps the best way to describe Obama’s tone. His words inspire because they speak to pos­sib­il­it­ies that are not con­strained by our present real­ity, even as they try to squarely address it. Yes we can has become what can we do to become what we can be.

Beyond Obama’s speech I found the cere­mony inspir­ing, music­ally, poet­ic­ally and cul­tur­ally. There were so many remind­ers of what the USA can offer to the world. The one neg­at­ive, for me, was Rick Warren’s prayer, which was ram­bling, inar­tic­u­late and unin­spir­ing. The con­trast with Joseph Lowery’s bene­dic­tion was stark. The latter was the voice of faith wizened with age and hardened through the exper­i­ence of hard­ship and oppres­sion. The former was an easy faith as uncrit­ic­ally con­sumed as an extra slice of pizza while sit­ting on the sofa watch­ing tele­vi­sion sitcoms.

That said, the most mem­or­able (and per­haps sur­real) visual was that of George W. Bush’s heli­copter leav­ing Wash­ing­ton. Like so many other things about this admin­is­tra­tion, it was a bitter and anaes­thet­ising moment that chal­lenged even the most elo­quent of us to com­ment on fully. Maur­een Dowd’s com­ments in the NYT are the best I’ve read so far, but my feel­ing is that visual of the heli­copter leav­ing Wash­ing­ton will inspire many more words in the days and weeks to come.

“Not since Klaatu landed in a flying saucer on the Ellipse has Wash­ing­ton been so mes­mer­ized by an object whirr­ing through the sky.

But this one was depart­ing, not arriving.

As W. ceased to be pres­id­ent, he flew off over the Cap­itol and across the Mall en route to Andrews Air Force Base, and then back to Texas.

I’ve seen many pres­id­ents come and go, but I’ve never watched a tableau like the one Tues­day, when four mil­lion eyes turned heav­en­ward, fol­low­ing the helicopter’s path out of town. Every­one, it seemed, was waving good­bye, with one or two hands, a wave that moved west­ward down the Mall toward the Lin­coln Memorial, and keep­ing their eyes fixed unwaver­ingly on that green bird.

They wanted to make abso­lutely, pos­it­ively cer­tain that W. was gone. It was like a phys­ical burden being lifted, like a sigh went up of “Thank God. Has Cheney’s wheel­chair left the build­ing, too?”

The crowd was exuber­ant that George Bush was now an ex-president, and 43 him­self was jovial “the way he always is,” accord­ing to his last press sec­ret­ary, Dana Perino.

It was like a cath­arsis in Greek drama, with the ant­ag­on­ist plucked out of the scene into the sky, and the prot­ag­on­ist drop­ping into the scene to magic­ally fix all the prob­lems. Except Barack Obama’s somber mien and restrained oratory con­veyed that he’s no divin­ity and there will be no easy res­ol­u­tion to this plot.”

Cath­arsis, cleans­ing, con­vic­tion and con­fid­ence — I felt all of them last night during the inaug­ur­a­tion cere­mony. One day does not change the world, but, if we see more good days than bad then over­time we can start feel like things really might be chan­ging for the better — and yes­ter­day was a good day!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 at 8:05 pm. It is filed under Daily Life, Globalisation, Theology and Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.