“I Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear…”
- The opening words of the Presidential Oath of Office in less the 14 hours.
It is 1 am EST in the morning Obama will take office, and Anderson Cooper is out on the Washington Mall talking to people who are camped out, in the cold, and are excited about Barack Obama and the change in administration. It is cold, and the middle of the night, but everyone is happy, wound up and excited.
I have never seen or read about any transition like this. Obama has an 83% approval rating and Bush has a 22% approval. That difference is part of what is driving this energy. But there is more. It is not simply that Bush was a catastrophe. It is not simply that Obama is popular. I think it is because Obama has speaks to the better nature of ourselves and in so doing he gives us hope.
This evening, before the oath, the one President is finished, but the new President has not started. The future is spread before Obama like a long bolt of cloth waiting to be cut. Obama stands ready with scissors in hand, and we wait to see what he will cut out of history. And we wait to see how we can help him sew it together.
As he takes his first cut we wish him well.
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