Many many of my friends went down to D.C. for the inauguration this week, and a big part of me wanted to go with them, but an apparently larger part of me thought that a few million people on the Mall sounded like Times Square on New Year’s Eve times a factor of 23, and that was not something that enticed me.  Instead my Mom came up from Jersey, and we watched the speech and everything together, which was a memorable experience in its own way.

I think my favorite parts of the inaugural speech were…

(1) Using Corinthians to take a subtle stab at George Bush’s extreme partisan politics.

(2) Reframing the “big government” issue as an issue of effectiveness instead of size, with such skill that it almost seemed to put an end to the debate.

(3) The part where he speaks directly to the Muslim world:

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

That last part indicates a sophisticated understanding of the dynamics of many Muslim countries, of the discontent people feel toward secular dictators who villify the U.S. and other Western countries as a distraction from devastated economies and a total failure of government to deliver much of anything to the people. (This is not to say that there are no legitimate grievances against the West, just that those grievances don’t justify dictators doing dictator-type things.)  In any case, those few lines made me feel that we are headed toward a much wiser and saner policy toward the Muslim world.

The expectations set before Obama are pretty over the top, and at some point the high is going to wear off, but I have to say that closing secret prisons and banning torture is a pretty good start.  (Very sad that we had to start with those things at all in a democratic country, but that’s where these last eight years took us.)

On a final entertaining note, Rush Limbaugh was on Hannity last night (I didn’t watch, just saw the transcript), and he seemed quite disturbed with the new status quo:

We’re a country comprised of human beings that the Democrat Party and the left have attempted to arrange into groups of victims, and that’s who he appeals to, and the victims are the people waiting around for some grievance to be resolved.

They’re waiting around for something to happen for them, and he is parlaying that. I think the fact that he’s African-American, his father was black, to me it’s irrelevant. …

I am hearing many Republicans say … well, we want him to succeed — and prominent Republicans. … they have laid down. They have totally — they’re drinking the Kool- Aid, too. They have no guts to stand up for what their beliefs are because they’re afraid of criticism, they’re afraid of being called racists….

First, for someone who thinks it’s irrelevant that Obama is Black, Limbaugh certainly mentions it quite a bit.  Second, I’ve been observing Republicans for some time now, and they generally don’t seem reluctant to insult Black Democrats for fear of being called racists - I can think of quite a good number of counterexamples, actually.  If many prominent Republicans are saying they hope Obama will succeed, I think it might be because it sounds a bit bad to say you hope our President will fail to improve our economy or make our nation secure and the like.  Oh, also, I have a feeling it might have something to do with this.

In the cab on the way back to the train station, we passed through four or five different neighborhoods.  We saw fellow canvassers every few blocks, and more than half the houses had Obama knockers hanging from the door knobs.  It came as no surprise that the Obama campaign managed to contact half of the entire state’s electorate.  It felt good to play some small part in it all.

Hassan and I have been following the election pretty, well, obsessively, so once PA and Ohio had been called we knew it was over.  But it didn’t really sink in until the networks called it at 11pm and MSNBC cut to shots of cheers and tears in Chicago and all around the world, just as we heard the sound of thumping and cheering and honking outside.  “We are family” was playing on my laptop, and the tears came fast and steady.

It’s been a hard eight years for progressives. More than once, it felt like even the idea of “progress” was elusive and illosory.  Even today, Obama’s victory was bittersweet, as 52% of Californians voted to ban gay people from having the right to marry.  This is a particularly crushing loss, since its impact will be real and immediate for thousands of gay couples. 

But I’m heartened by the fact that voters under 30 had a different opinion: nearly two-thirds voted for human rights for gay people. There’s a lot of work to be done, but against the backdrop of Obama’s victory, I feel hope for the possibilities, and the strength to strive for them.

I keep thinking about MLK’s words, that the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.  Implicit in his words is that sometimes the arc is so long it’s hard to see it. But today I feel like I can just barely make it out, turning upward toward the sky.  But King captures it all so much better:

I must confess, my friends, the road ahead will not always be smooth. There will still be rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment. There will be inevitable setbacks here and there. There will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. We may again with tear-drenched eyes have to stand before the bier of some courageous civil-rights worker whose life will be snuffed out by the dastardly acts of bloodthirsty mobs. Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future. And as we continue our charted course, we may gain consolation in the words so nobly left by that great black bard who was also a great freedom fighter of yesterday, James Weldon Johnson:

  Stony the road we trod,
  Bitter the chastening rod
  Felt in the days
  When hope unborn had died.

  Yet with a steady beat,
  Have not our weary feet
  Come to the place
  For which our fathers sighed?

  We have come over the way

  That with tears hath been watered.
  We have come treading our paths
  Through the blood of the slaughtered,

  Out from the gloomy past,
  Till now we stand at last

  Where the bright gleam
  Of our bright star is cast.

Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It will give us the courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.

Let us realize that William Cullen Bryant is right: “Truth crushed to earth will rise again.” Let us go out realizing that the Bible is right: “Be not deceived, God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” This is our hope for the future, and with this faith we will be able to sing in some not too distant tomorrow with a cosmic past tense, “We have overcome, we have overcome, deep in my heart, I did believe we would overcome.”

I’ve always loved Les Mis, but now it has an entirely new layer of meaning….

If you have trouble with the youtube video, try watching it directly at the source at CollegeHumor.

I thought the debate was a victory for Obama for a couple of reasons.  First, he won the “body language” debate.  He looked relaxed, presidential, and even personable in the way he looked McCain, Lehrer, and the audience in the eye, and called McCain, “John,” speaking directly to him.  McCain’s scowling, muttering, and inability or unwillingness to look Obama in the eye came across looking petulant and contemptuous.  The lack of eye contact, in particular, may go down in history with Al Gore’s sigh and HW looking at his watch.

Second, McCain’s major goal was to paint Obama as naive and inexperienced on foreign policy, and it completely backfired.  First of all, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this is a risky strategy to begin with. Democrats tried this on W., and it didn’t work, because it came off as elitist and condescending.  Now McCain is coming off that way, especially since he’s being so blunt about it.  Following the “show-it-don’t-tell-it” rule, Obama never directly responded to the accusation of being naive, but his clear fluency and mastery of every major foreign policy issue (down to the names and correct pronunciation of relatively less known foreign leaders) were far more effective than any direct response.  If anything, McCain’s accusations of naivete only highlighted the fact that concerns about Obama’s lack of experience and knowledge were completely misplaced.

On a not entirely related note, one of my favorite moments of the debate was when McCain accused Obama of having a liberal voting record, and Obama responded that most of that was just because of his opposition to the failed policies of the Bush administration. I don’t think the L-word has been an effective attack for Republicans since it shot Michael Dukakis out of the tank, but this was an especially effective response.

A bunch of the pundits immediately said McCain had won, but so far it seems like voters, especially uncommitted voters, were more impressed by Obama.  Several polls have indicated that folks thought Obama won, and the early results of the tracking polls in the past day show Obama maintaining or expanding his lead. One focus group in particular said that the dials for McCain went way down every time he said Obama was naive, though I can’t seem to find that link at the moment.

UPDATE: Thanks to Hassan, I found that link on focus group ratings, which was from Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic.

“Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude. I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America.

My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully, Minister of Treasury Paulson”

One more interesting note:  The true author of this missive is unknown, but according to the Washington Post one of the first known places it was circulated was from someone at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This is one of those sketches that really don’t have to exaggerate too much in order to be funny – some of John McCain’s real ads are pretty much this ridiculous.

It’s interesting that the sketch shows McCain sort of naively going along with the misleading ads.  There’s this narrative out there that McCain really still is a nice guy with integrity, and it’s really the Republican machine that’s dragging him down into the mud, but I’m skeptical of that. John McCain is the one calling the shots of his campaign, and he’s too smart a guy to be tricked by his own advisors into playing dirtier than he wants to.  His campaign is running the way it is because that’s how he thinks he can win.