Catastrophe and Euphoria

President Obama. Though I was originally a Biden-backer, I never thought I'd be able to write "President Biden" or "President Obama" for that matter. After all, I am the same one whose value system told him to vote for Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Walter Mondale in 1984. Now, after being exposed to the pomp and circumstance of the day-long inauguration ceremony and not being able to remember the underwhelming inaugural speech by President Obama who knows that his golden tongue, well exercised and polished as it is, has a lot to do and do quickly if he wants to turn this country around, I am left wondering what all the fuss is for.

I suppose there is something to be said for the peaceful transition of power and for the little ceremony that America has left. It's the thorn in the side of and downfall of most other governments around the world. We seem to have mastered the art. One could say that the previous administration should have been turned out of power far sooner than noon eastern time today, having presided over the fall of the American financial markets and the ripples that are slowly transitioning into, I fear, a tidal wave that will impact more lives than even Barack Obama can hope to save. I hope I am wrong.

Simon Schama was interviewed on Bill Moyers' Journal. Schama, a Briton teaching at Columbia University, observed what we are going through right now: the convergence of catastrophe and euphoria. People are putting so much faith in the young couple I am watching walk down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, cold wind howling over the teeming crowds. All this while notice comes to my computer that the Dow Industrials sink 332 points as a reminder of the reality that President Obama will face when he wakes up tomorrow and finds the horror and dread that is filling too many families' lives today including my own. So it is that my euphoria at having Barack Obama as President - a guy of my generation - is tempered, mashed even, by the catastrophe that I and undoubtedly thousands like me are feeling is impending, the gathering gloom to come before the hope and change that were promised us in the campaign arrives, breathless.

My only regret is now that I am not a part of the government, that I am somehow not doing my part. I can't help but think that the 28 years of Reaganomics against which I protested on the mall in Madison, Wisconsin but under which I lived my entire adult life have so messed up this country that it will be difficult for me, really difficult, to believe in any office-holder who comes to promise - and deliver- a better future. The hopeless romantic in me, however, wants to believe in tomorrow and the reason why America has historically held and still holds inexhaustable promise for so many, including me. The fact that this country could elect a Barack Obama President makes me think that anything is possible, the good as well as the bad.

Randy Shiner