inauguration
I took the morning off work to watch the inauguration today, travelling across town to start the day off with mimosas and pesto quiche, among other goodies. I arrive to find that my gracious hosts had created nametags for everyone. I liked mine so much I ended up wearing it the rest of the day.
The inauguration was… well, I don’t need to reiterate. You all know how it went by now.
I’ve never really gotten into politics on this blog, and I don’t intend to start now, so I’ll keep this short: the Obama victory in this last election was never so much about Obama himself so much as it was about Americans finally declaring they wanted a break from politics as usual, that they were tired of having to pick from nearly indistinguishable candidates (I voted for Gore in 2000 because I was slightly less ‘meh’ about him than Bush, and I voted for Kerry last time for more or less the same reason).
I remember the delirious smiles after the election, the fellow Portlanders I’d see in the street all grinning at each other like we had winning lotto tickets in our pockets and our favorite teams had just swept the playoffs. There was a palpable feeling of “holy crap, we DID it” circulating among–well, everyone who didn’t vote for McCain, I guess.
I don’t have the unreasonable expectation that our new President is going to magically make everything better tomorrow. I don’t think just one person can make that kind of change. As much as we despise Bush, it took more than just him on his own to sink this country as low as it is now (Cheney helped some). I don’t doubt we’ve got a long way to go in turning things around. What I think is different now is the feeling that we’re all in this together, but we’re united in wanting to turn things around and move them in a different direction.
That’s all. We’ll resume our regularly scheduled pablum for the remainder of the week.
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