So now we
know the fate of Team Obama's thirteen-million strong e-mail list, that
unprecedented netroots force that used social networking and new media
technologies to put a one-time community organizer in the White House.
President Obama is banking on the continuing support of his online constituency
through the creation of "Organizing
for America."
Three hours before Barack Hussein Obama took the oath of office to
become the nation's first African-American president, the crowd already
looked impossible. Gazing west from the Capitol, you could see them: an
incomprehensible mass of peaceful citizens, overwhelming every monument,
impediment and security banner that had been put up to contain them. The
sight was so arresting that when the senators marched out onto the
rostrum, Patrick Leahy and Orrin Hatch stopped to snap photos.
A confession: I occasionally cry during romantic movies and History Channel documentaries.
Another confession: I often pretend that I'm coughing or clearing my throat in order to obscure crying from friends and family.
But watching the presidential inauguration, I — like millions of Americans — lost the ability to hide a public case of ocular Niagara Falls.
History undoubtedly spurred some of our national outpouring this week. A black man being sworn in to lead a country built on slavery, segregation and persistent racism is an unfathomable landmark.
It started with a train ride. Barack Obama rode to Washington, D.C., for his presidential inauguration on a whistle-stop tour. "To the children who hear the whistle of the train and dream of a better life -- that's who we're fighting for," Obama said along the tour, which was compared to the train ride taken by Abraham Lincoln from Springfield, Ill., to Washington, D.C., in February 1861, en route to his first inauguration.
No matter how much celebrity they try to infuse him with, Barack Obama remains, somehow, as unassuming - so it appears - as that picture of him, which made the rounds on the Internet a few months ago, wiping his own table at a fast-food restaurant.
Is it all a dream? Has "change" really come to America, and the world, or has business as usual merely shape-shifted?
So, let's now heed the words of our new president and set aside childish things. Presumably that includes the $450 worth of designer Obama T-shirts that I got in return for a campaign contribution made two days before the election in a sudden panic that he yet might lose.
President Barack Obama takes office at a time defined by hope and fear in equal measure. To confront this nation's many challenges he will need to act swiftly, show that he is on the side of people whose homes are being foreclosed and jobs lost and invest political capital--along with trillions of dollars--in a sustained recovery program. While many caution our new President to tread carefully, the reality is that half-steps will not lay the groundwork for a new economy that is more just and fair.
NEW YORK - As an estimated two million celebrants converge on the U.S. capital for the inauguration festivities of President-elect Barack Obama Tuesday, the mood among human rights groups and some religious leaders is somewhat more sombre.
They are calling on Obama to use his first hundred days in office to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay and repudiate the policies of President George W. Bush on an array of issues ranging from detainee torture and rendition to warrantless wiretapping and signing statements.
"Never in our national history has there been so dramatic a coincidence
as this simultaneous transfer of power and the complete collapse of a
system and of a philosophy." Resonant and relevant words at this
moment.
Those words come from March 1933, as President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt marked the end of an epoch, and The Nation editorialized that
his inaugural words "had something of the challenge, the symbolism, and
the simplicity of a trumpet blast."
Barack Obama's presidency will be recorded in the history books as having begun on January 20, 2009, in Washington, D.C.
In fact, it began on another, colder January night in Dubuque, Iowa. Obama was not in Dubuque that night.
But Brianna Cleland, a 22-year-old teacher, was.
"I really want to make something happen in America," she told me that
night. "And the way to do that is with someone new, with someone
different, and that's Barack Obama."
Cleland had never caucused before.
