A week into our new administration and I'm still pinching myself to make sure it's all real. Every time I open the paper I'm eager to see what awesome new thing Obama has done since the last time I looked, and I feel unspeakable happiness as eight years of incompetent leadership is undone bit by bit. On inauguration morning my company set the huge flat-screen TVs in our board room to show the footage coming in from CNN, and I sat on the floor in the midst of dozens of my coworkers and wept with joy as Obama placed his hand on the Bible. While listening to his speech I cheered aloud at the inclusiveness of naming unbelievers with believers, and at the declaration that science would be restored to its rightful place (with a pointed cut of the camera to Dubya sitting there like a lump). I've been surprised at how quickly some people have dismissed the speech for not having any real highlights, though it's true that in places the traditional rhetoric Obama delivered admittedly seemed a little dull, such as this line near the beginning: "At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the
skill or vision of those in high office, but because we, the people,
have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our
founding documents." But Obama's words carried a sharp bite, if you listened carefully. In a piece written for the Guardian this weekend that gives a close reading of the speech Jonathan Raban says that Obama had a very particular purpose in the language he chose:
Under the guise of noble platitude Obama was able to get away with
murder, cloaking in familiar and emollient language an address that
otherwise defied convention. There was a hint of this in his ritual bow
to the outgoing president, in which he spent five words acknowledging
Bush's service to his country and 10 in thanking him for his departure
from office. In no inaugural has a president so completely repudiated
the policies of his predecessor as Obama did on Tuesday. Look back at
the "forbearers" sentence, and see the sting in its tail: "true to our
founding documents". Most of the crowd of more than a million who
packed the Mall, a few of whom loudly booed Dick Cheney when he was
wheeled on to the stage, believed that the Bush administration had done
its best to shred the constitution. The distinction between "we the
people" (who are loyal to the founding documents) and "those in high
office" (who stand accused of abusing them) hung ambiguously in the
air. If you wanted to hear it, it was there; if you didn't, it wasn't.
I absolutely did hear it, and in fact I was shocked and thrilled at the boldness of Obama in his utter dismissal of Bush throughout the speech. I kept waiting for any sign of recognition to register on Dubya's face, but it remained the all-too-familar blank slate up through the moment he boarded that waiting copter and flew away (hopefully never to be seen again). Obama's speech once again reinforces our new president as the kind of man who can introduce something fresh into tired old tropes, not by wiping them out completely but by cleverly updating the game at the same time he makes his new direction clear. That bodes very well indeed for the next eight years.