I Want To Believe
We have a new president. We get one every four to eight years. In my lifetime there have been twelve inaugurations. When I was born, LBJ was in office, a president who truly championed civil rights. I watched Nixon open relations with China when I was in preschool. I watched him tear down a nation's beliefs about itself and its government with the Watergate scandal when I was in first and second grades. I watched Gerald Ford inaugurated without benefit of any election. I watched Jimmy Carter promise a shining future just around the corner. I watched Ronald Reagan usher in twelve years of conservative brainwashing for a nation just barely gaining the consciousness it needed to take it into the twenty-first century. I watched George Bush Senior launch a war for oil.
In 1993, I watched Bill Clinton stand on a windswept winter platform and take the oath of office, and for the first time in my life, felt my country's president represented me. I watched Clinton lie and dissemble, and drag the party I believed in through the mud. I watched an election snatched from Al Gore's hands by a close vote, bad design, and a Supreme Court beholden to the Reagan-Bush hegemony. For eight long years I watched George Bush Junior squander our resources, our international good will, our soldiers' lives, our reputation as a nation. Our hope.
I've lived through existential despair, through wild hope, through hope dashed. I should be cynical, and I am. I know that tomorrow the sausage factory will start up again. I know that one man can't fix this by himself, that partisanship still rules the day, that the last eight years have weighed our country down as heavily as the cement shoes do a mob hit's feet.
But I have hope. I am reminded of Fox Mulder's "I want to believe" poster. But this isn't little grey men from distant stars, this is a tall brown man with an intelligent light in his eyes and a promise of integrity on his lips.
President Barack Hussein Obama.
I listen to him speak and I have tears in my eyes. Tears of hope. And I can feel it in everyone around me, this massive hope. This will among my fellow Americans to believe that this time, this time, things will be different. Maybe the collective desire of the nation for this to work will be enough to make it happen. Maybe with those friends we have left in the rest of the world pulling for us, with a leader we want to believe in, with a future bright and shining just out of our reach, maybe we really can do it.
President Obama said it best-I'm not talking about blind optimism here - the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't talk about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. No, I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!
President Obama. Just saying it gives me a thrill of hope. Audacious, precious, wonderful hope. Can we do it, Mister President? Can we bring the hope of America to fruition? I want to believe. I want to believe. I want to stand proud and tall and mean every syllable when I shout with you, "Yes we can."
In 1993, I watched Bill Clinton stand on a windswept winter platform and take the oath of office, and for the first time in my life, felt my country's president represented me. I watched Clinton lie and dissemble, and drag the party I believed in through the mud. I watched an election snatched from Al Gore's hands by a close vote, bad design, and a Supreme Court beholden to the Reagan-Bush hegemony. For eight long years I watched George Bush Junior squander our resources, our international good will, our soldiers' lives, our reputation as a nation. Our hope.
I've lived through existential despair, through wild hope, through hope dashed. I should be cynical, and I am. I know that tomorrow the sausage factory will start up again. I know that one man can't fix this by himself, that partisanship still rules the day, that the last eight years have weighed our country down as heavily as the cement shoes do a mob hit's feet.
But I have hope. I am reminded of Fox Mulder's "I want to believe" poster. But this isn't little grey men from distant stars, this is a tall brown man with an intelligent light in his eyes and a promise of integrity on his lips.
President Barack Hussein Obama.
I listen to him speak and I have tears in my eyes. Tears of hope. And I can feel it in everyone around me, this massive hope. This will among my fellow Americans to believe that this time, this time, things will be different. Maybe the collective desire of the nation for this to work will be enough to make it happen. Maybe with those friends we have left in the rest of the world pulling for us, with a leader we want to believe in, with a future bright and shining just out of our reach, maybe we really can do it.
President Obama said it best-I'm not talking about blind optimism here - the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't talk about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. No, I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!
President Obama. Just saying it gives me a thrill of hope. Audacious, precious, wonderful hope. Can we do it, Mister President? Can we bring the hope of America to fruition? I want to believe. I want to believe. I want to stand proud and tall and mean every syllable when I shout with you, "Yes we can."