As sickening as election night was in 2004, so was Tuesday an enormous relief. Putting on a critic’s cap, consider that Obama’s speech (though admittedly better delivered) contained many of the same ideas Bush’s victory speech in 2000 contained; yet President-elect Obama appears to mean it, while Bush was reciting an expected litany of reaching-across-the-aisle platitudes. Imagining a president who means what he says, whose words are “reality-based” rather than the shrewd positioning of a scriptwriter — that’s the most hopeful element from this vantage point.
As a self-appointed amateur Presidential historian, I thought about the unexpected words of a guy who was no great orator, and wasn’t even elected to the executive branch when he suddenly was sworn in as President. You have to hand it to Gerald Ford: “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.”
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | Barack Obama
