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Wait! We're Not Done with Bush Yet...

3:18 PM, January 19, 2009 | Comments (25)
Celebratory is a safe way to describe the mood in Washington. And not just for Barack Obama's big day on Tuesday. When Obama raises his right hand, it will mark for millions of his supporters the end of something else. At Dupont Circle in Northwest Washington,...

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Posted Tuesday, January 20, 2009 11:13 AM

On the Metro, We Hear America Sing

Howard Fineman
From my seat facing the podium, I can see the flags and the somber dignitaries. On the subway ride here to the Capitol, I saw America smiling. With New York City cops expertly herding the crowds, more than a million riders worked their way to the Mall, and I talked to some of them on the Red and Blue lines here. Each had something to say about their hopes for and expectations of Barack Obama.

People from across the country were on the trains. Ed Potocek and Amy Santacaterina had flown in from Chicago. Both 46, he was in software; she worked for city government. "To me Obama represents accountability and participation," said Ed. "The idea that everyone pitches in." Amy said she felt ties to everyone. "I never hugged so many strangers in my life. Obama is a citizen of America -- and the world."

I met two families from New Orleans, the Bosticks and the Ramonds. For their teenage kids, Obama was about one word: change. "Change and history," said Ana Bostick, 17. "He's the first black president!!"

Rose Cooper, a city school teacher from Galveston with more than 20 years of experience, sais that Obama was going to have to be about "sticking with his promises. We're losing so many jobs. He needs to turn it around." She had a special mission here: to record everything for her students. "They kept saying, 'Ms. Cooper we can't believe you're going!' Well, here I am!"

I met Andy Towle and Corey Johnson, gay activists who run the popular blog towleroad.com. They were happy, too, but not about Obama's decision to ask the Rev. Rick Warren to give the invocation. "Obama's first and only big mistake so far," said Johnson.

Even the press line into the grounds was wonderfully American in its diversity. There was Charles Hallman, who works for the oldest African-American newspaper in Minnesota. And I met Sara Hassan, 27, a fellow graduate of the Columbia Journalism School. She is Bangladeshi-American. She wore a headscarf. Her father teaches English literature at a college in South Carolina. His specialty is Irish modern poetry.

Welcome to Obama's America!

James Joyce wrote that his aspiring character Stephen yearned to "forge in the smithy of his soul" a new identity as an artist. America is forging (reforging) its own identity today.
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Posted By: Mark Thieme (January 21, 2009 at 2:30 PM)

I have seen a land right merry with the sun,

where children sing, and rolling hills lie

like passioned women wanton with harvest.

And there in the King's Highway sat and sits a figure veiled and bowed,

by which the traveller's footsteps hasten as they go.

On the tainted air broods fear.

Three centuries' thought has been the raising and unveiling of that bowed human heart,

and now behold a century new for the duty and the deed.

W E B Dubois

from The Souls of Black Folk

Of the Meaning of Progress

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