When Barack Hussein Obama laid his hand on the Lincoln Bible and recited the oath of the office of the President of the United States (however falteringly) along with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, the event seemed almost redundant.
Just over a year ago, on Jan 8., Obama gave his now-legendary ‘Yes We Can’ speech after losing the New Hampshire primary election to Hillary Clinton. This speech was later famously set to music by the Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am and emblazoned across T-shirts and blog subject lines, and just a few days ago appended to a prayer during a service the Obama family attended. NBC reported that at the end of the Washington, D.C. service, the pastor leading the prayer ended by saying, ‘Yes we can, in the name of Jesus we pray, Amen.’
The Jan. 8, 2008 ‘Yes We Can’ speech is the inaugural address President Obama never got to give.
Some in the media are criticizing Obama’s inaugural address, saying that it sounded more like a policy-driven State of the Union task list than the typically lofty oratory of past presidents’ inaugurations. However, oratory changes to reflect times and circumstances, and it is clear that this is just such the reason behind Obama’s momentum shift. Just a year ago, the junior senator from Illinois told us about ‘the unlikely story that is America, [where] there has never been anything false about hope.’ Yesterday, the 44th president said the word ‘hope’ only three times, paired with ‘fear,’ ‘the depths of winter’ and braving ‘the icy currents.’
The last year has brought us a new Obama, one facing the realities of an inherited ‘nation at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred,’ and an economy in which ‘homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered,’ as he told the millions gathered in D.C. yesterday afternoon and the billions around the world tuning in to the inauguration festivities.
The contrast between the idealistic candidate of last year and the slightly more grounded commander-in-chief of yesterday is not so extreme as night and day. Instead, his recent actions and oratories have been just the right balance of the rhetoric that won voters over and sobering reminders of the nation’s various dilemmas and what citizens can do to help, like his speeches about and participation in the Martin Luther King Day of Service Monday, saying, ‘We can’t allow idle hands. Everybody’s got to be involved. Everybody’s got to pitch in.’ Obama’s oratory has evolved from ‘yes we can’ to yes we can, and here’s how.
Metaphorically, he has begun his term by putting the American people between hope and a hard place.’
When the ‘oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms,’ as yesterday’s was, that’s not the worst place to be. It may, in fact, be the exact point where the road to national recovery begins.
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