In-blog-uration

Chief Justice Roberts could barely get the words out, but Barack Obama stood there, looking outwardly patient but inwardly furious, then said the words and became President Obama. I was thinking Don Cheadle of in Ocean's Eleven saying, "You wanker. You had one f***ing job to."

This is probably the most-watched event around the world since the moon landing 40 years ago. All the jubilation does masquerade also over a fair bit of rage too. Healing will take time. It always does. I watched this with my little girl this morning. This is all about hope. Tens of millions of Americans fervently hope that we really can turn this economy. And there is a chance we might. I was stuck by a passage from Obama's speech that, to me, seemed deliberately evocative of FDR's address in 1932 to Oglethorpe University:

"You have been struck, I know, by the tragic irony of our economic situation today. We have not been brought to our present state by any natural calamity--by drought or floods or earthquakes or by the destruction of our productive machine or our man power. Indeed, we have a superabundance of raw materials, a more than ample supply of equipment for manufacturing these materials into the goods which we need, and transportation and commercial facilities for making them available to all who need them. But raw materials stand unused, factories stand idle, railroad traffic continues to dwindle, merchants sell less and less, while millions of able-bodied men and women, in dire need, are clamoring for the opportunity to work. This is the awful paradox with which we are confronted, a stinging rebuke that challenges our power to operate the economic machine which we have created."

President Obama said, "We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."