Thoughts on the Inauguration of Barack Obama

I did not vote for Barack Obama. Nevertheless, when he is sworn in today as our 44th president, I will be very proud.

No, I didn’t vote for Obama because he was black. Like so many other Americans who voted for John McCain, I voted against Obama because of his policies, his ideologies, his ties to controversial figures, and his near canonization by the press. Whether or not those things come back to haunt him during his term, we shall see. But for now, I rejoice with my fellow Americans.

I suppose I could sulk, cross my arms begrudgingly, and nit-pick the guy to death for the next four eight years. But the fact is, there’s never been a perfect president… and that ain’t about to change. Our country has survived so much — civil wars, foreign wars, great depressions, riots, impeachments, scandals, terrorist attacks, and, yes, awful presidents. And maybe that’s the thing — America’s greatness, America’s goodness, America’s resilience, America’s possibilities — that buoys my hope.

Strangely, that’s the same thing that many Obama supporters were bemoaning just four months ago.

They said America was hated, that we’d lost international respect. They said that currents of racism run deep, that the “racial ceiling” had capped millions of black Americans. They said that hope had disappeared under the tyrannical Bush / Cheney reign, that our civil rights were slowly being stripped, that our Constitution was being profaned. Perhaps the crowning expression of this was Michelle Obama’s now infamous remark in February 2008: “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.”

Funny how things have changed. Suddenly, there is hope. There is pride. But why?

Listen to how Bill Bennett so eloquently put it in A Mountaintop Moment:

The election of Barack Obama confirms a new self-evident truth: that there is no ceiling to achievement in America based on race. Yes, of course, there is still racism in America. But there are no more viable excuses based simply on race. A black man or woman can become President in America — or anything else he or she wants to be.

And, now we can all clearly see what we may have been blind to in the past: qualifications or demerits based on skin color, and not character, are the new fiction in America. Racial prejudice should die in the rest of America as it died at the ballot boxes across America last year — as should an ethic of non- or low-achievement based on excuses and low expectations.

What our Founders and Lincoln knew, what Martin Luther King, Jr. marched, spoke, and died for, we have achieved.

As of today there is a “new fiction” in America. It is the fiction that says dreams don’t matter. It is the fiction that says the Establishment will keep you down. It is the fiction that says you are beyond hope, destined to be second-rate. It is the fiction that says a person of color can’t become the most important person on earth. When the torch is passed on the Capitol steps, many lies are passing away with it.

But another fiction is dying today — It is the fiction that hope was gone. The conditions that existed to allow Barack Obama to become President existed long before him, and continue to exist. The hope we have today is the hope that was always there. Even when Michelle Obama didn’t see it. Even when the world called us the bad guy. Even when they marched, chanted, threw bottles, and burned flags. Even when our servicemen died. All the while, there was hope.

As millions flock to the nation’s Capitol, it is not just to witness the inaguration of our first black president. It is to witness the realization of a Dream, the maturing of an Idea. No, I didn’t vote for Barack Obama. But he is the recipient of America’s greatest commodity: Hope. I’m praying, for our sake, for his success.