Yes, we will.
Yesterday, amidst a chorus of boos, George W. Bush ascended to the podium in front of the Capitol Building to wish his successor well, thus completing his last duty as President. Moments later, Joseph R. Biden rose to wild applause to take the oath of the office of vice president from Associate Justice John Paul Stevens; when Bush’s term officially expired at noon, Mr. Biden was our President.
But not for long. Shortly after noon, Barack Obama took his oath from Chief Justice John Roberts, bringing to an end the longest, most expensive, and most captivating presidential campaign in recent history. He accepted the office with a terse rebuke of the outgoing administration’s “failure to make hard choices,” but joined this strong rhetoric with a reminder that in America, our shared experience and commitment to the republican experiment ought always trump our differences. The speech – one of his shorter – was peppered with a few key phrases seemingly calculated to appeal to readers of this site, including an appeal to scientific best practices ((“We will restore science to its rightful place. . . .” More on that later, when I’ve had more than one hour of sleep in two days.)) and yet another first among a day of firsts – the first favorable mention of atheists in a presidential address. ((“For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and nonbelievers.”)) God in heaven, he might be serious about this whole “unity” thing.
But this momentous day leaves one question unanswered for me, my excellent co-writer, and all the erstwhile contributors to this small corner of the web: for a site that defined itself by advocating, since April, for Obama’s election, where do we go from here? This site – like so many liberal blogs, I imagine – has never been forced to confront the question of what role it should take during a favorable administration & sympathetic political climate. We liberals are rather used to being the minority: what do we do when we’re the majority, and everything seems to be coming up roses?
Although the narrow answer is not yet clear, I can say this much: we are not an apologist or panegyrist for the Obama administration. As I’ve argued many times before, a politician is a means towards a political end, not the end itself. While we valorize President Obama as the quintessentially American progressive – a liberal politician who clearly acknowledges the values of temperance, moderation, cooperation, and service to the nation – this is a liberal site, not an Obama site, “favicon” notwithstanding. I do not doubt that we here will, at times, disagree with the President’s decisions, and our allegiance to our progressive conception of a freer, more perfect union trumps any allegiance to the President himself.
That said, the few cases where we have disagreed with Obama so far – in selecting Rick Warren as an inaugural speaker, and in going farther to cut taxes than we expected – we’ve had occasion to revisit our criticisms, and come to see these theoretical deviations from the progressive norm as either attempts to symbolically unite the country, or chart the factually-correct path, not the ideologically correct path. Both are respectable goals, and these brief deviations from our ideal candidate have gone part of the way to revealing President Obama as less of a conservative, liberal, or moderate than a pragmatist with a leftward bent, something I at least respect greatly for its novelty and potential efficacy.
In short, we may have to confront the fact that President Obama doesn’t fit neatly into a box of what we expect him to do, and sometimes that might be for the better, both for our country and for our ever-evolving sense of what a progressive America should look like. If this turns out to be the case, for we Democrats, our relationship with President Obama may end up looking less like the brief flare of infatuation with a charismatic politician, and more like a long-term relationship: day-by-day, it won’t always duplicate the magic of the first date, and it may even have its dark moments. But when it’s all over in 2016, we’ll be glad of the relationship, as much for its valleys as its peaks, and we’ll have learned something about ourselves along the way. Time shall tell. For now, at least, let it suffice that we’re glad to see him at 1600 Pennsylvania.
Yesterday, amidst a chorus of boos, George W. Bush ascended to the podium in front of the Capitol Building to wish his successor well…
Treated with class to the end. Let’s hope in 2012 or 2016 the Right gets an opportunity to demonstrate how adults behave in times like these.
Posted by Mike at The Big Stick | January 21, 2009, 8:42 amHaha I just re-read this comment. How’d that turn out?
Posted by ACG | December 8, 2009, 1:52 amThe way that many on the right have behaved before and after Obama’s victory kind of makes me doubt that.
Posted by Jello | January 21, 2009, 8:55 amtotally, jello.
by the way … free country, mike. yesterday was a celebration of every person’s freedom to cheer, jeer, or ignore.
there was plenty applause, too.
Posted by didionsmommy | January 21, 2009, 9:14 amI actually thought the booing of Bush was a little tacky. I would not have done that, had I made it to the mall. The one person I did boo was Chief Justice Roberts, just as they announced his name and he stood up… which turned out to be rather prescient.
Posted by Ames | January 21, 2009, 9:21 amwell, i watched the whole thing on cspan … where ambient sounds are de rigueur … (like bush I repeatedly asking barbara where they were supposed to go or the camera guys asking each other if they “got that” when filming the motorcade to the capitol) …
i didn’t hear any booing … from the ticketed seats …
network and cable channels, however, had to have been seeking pockets of people who were booing … kinda like during the democratic convention when they were DYING to see a PUMA revolution …
that groups of people among the millions there were booing the president, the vice president, or even the chief justice (wink!) is no big deal.
i wouldn’t have booed anyone.
and if anyone is interested in the right’s monopoly of the high road … check this out …
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/281469.php
Posted by didionsmommy | January 21, 2009, 9:47 amThe above is case in point, Mike is a fellow that appreciates decorum at a momentus national event, but there are plenty of bad sports on both sides and I doubt anyone can claim the high ground in this regard.
Posted by Jello | January 21, 2009, 9:58 amI’d rather have “adult” investigations into wrongdoing rather than “childish” booing, but I think that’s the only outlet right now.
I’m just glad Barack mostly talks to us like adults and not petulant ignorant children.
Posted by Oneiroi | January 21, 2009, 11:21 amSomething also tells me the Whitehouse keyboards all still had their O’s this morning.
The point is that everyone should have been respectful yesterday. The peaceful transfer of power for the most powerful nation on earth should be a beacon for every other country. Free country or not, they had 8 years to boo the president. How about just shutting up for one day?
Posted by Mike at The Big Stick | January 21, 2009, 12:13 pmPC, Bush’s team robbed Clinton’s heir designate of his ahoy at the oval office, using legalism and the entrenched prejudices of the Supreme Court to stifle the people’s will. How do you expect Clinton’s team to have acted?
Moving forwards, Bush used his campaign as a moderate to shoehorn offensive, divisive extremism into national politics, while robbing the nation’s treasury and squandering her goodwill abroad, and her future legacy. He was an awful man: or at least, his associates were awful and he did nothing to stop them. While I think the name “Bush” has been dragged through the mud enough, and that the booing was a little much, I do see where the people were coming from. As someone said above, Obama is the first politician in a while to talk to us like we’re adults, and the comparison with Bush could fain be more striking. The people are entitled to some anger: yesterday needed to be as much cathartic as it did solemn and forward-looking. Better that it’s out of the collective system now.
Posted by Ames | January 21, 2009, 1:32 pmAhhhh frak. “Ahoy”=”Shot”
Posted by Ames | January 21, 2009, 1:37 pmPC, Bush’s team robbed Clinton’s heir designate of his ahoy at the oval office, using legalism and the entrenched prejudices of the Supreme Court to stifle the people’s will. How do you expect Clinton’s team to have acted?
(Insert rolling eyes here. )
The problem is that I doubt it will be a parting shot because the Left’s hatred of Bush has never been rationale, nor do I believe they have it out of their system, hence the ramped-up talk of ‘truth commissions’ and the like. They want their pound of fleash and merely electing Obama was just the first ounce.
Posted by Mike at The Big Stick | January 21, 2009, 1:47 pmOn the positive side though, the Left and their cohorts in the press set the bar so high for detective journalism that if someone so much as thinks about bending the rules in the Obama Administration there will a 24-hour news cycle devoted to it.
Posted by Mike at The Big Stick | January 21, 2009, 1:54 pm(Insert rolling eyes here. )
Come now. Like so many other times in the Bush administration, the conspiracy theories about the 2000 election all wound up true.
Posted by Ames | January 21, 2009, 4:22 pmAccording to CNN yesterday, even though Obama had not yet taken the oath of office, once the clock struck noon, he WAS the President.
Posted by LMLM | January 21, 2009, 4:22 pmwell, it’s enough for me to have my deep concerns about the bush administration characterized as “hatred” that “has never been rationale [sic].”
thanks, mike, it’s all so clear now.
Posted by didionsmommy | January 21, 2009, 6:16 pmhello, Mr. President of the united state of american i admire you a lot.the strategy by your administration is working.the suprising thing is the stimulus package introduce in the economic policy,which began to work effectively as the company that made a lot of profit and planning to give bonus to his employees.keep it up as a pray along with you.from ansumana fofana in monrivia.00231-6-422918
Posted by ansumana fofana | July 21, 2009, 1:54 pm