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Welcome, President Obama! - Comments (0)
Carole McWilliams - 1/23/2009
Millions of Americans shared the excitement and exultation on Tuesday during another peaceful transfer of power in America.
Here on the outer reaches of the National Mall, it was very sweet indeed, especially after the last eight years. At home Tuesday night, I savored the feeling that everything had changed.
One of my hopes is that we now have a leader who actually will be a uniter, not a divider. I hope we can get past the unfortunate idea put out by some during the election campaign that only certain folks are “real” Americans and the rest of us aren’t.
Even before the inauguration, President-elect Obama was making efforts to reach across to people who voted for John McCain, to show that they won’t be disenfranchised from the political process, even if they don’t get their way on a lot of things.
From what I’ve seen so far, ultra liberals might not get their way on a lot of things either, despite Republican pre-election claims that Obama was the most liberal member of the US Senate. I never saw the evidence for that. I still don’t.
I see a lot more of governing from the center, for the moderate majority. We desperately need that. Let the extremists on both ends of the political spectrums go to their opposing corners and sulk if they don’t want to be helpful.
Another of my hopes is that President Obama will restore the positive things this country stands for, the ideals we celebrate on the Fourth of July.
I’ll be really looking forward to that holiday this year, not approaching it as in the past several years with a sullen anger that I had to repress to be able to enjoy the day as an act of defiance. No more of that!
I have hopes that the US Constitution (all of it) and the rule of law (from the top on down) have been restored to primacy.
A lot of times during the past eight years, I had the unhappy feeling that the new ethic in this country was, “I’ve got mine. The rest of you can go you know where.”
I rejoice in President Obama’s message that we’re all in this together, and his call for Americans to step up and help with the difficult work that needs to be done in the next few years.
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