OK, so maybe President Obama’s kickoff oration never quite achieved the altitude of “ Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” but I’m struck nonetheless by the similarities, both in the contexts of his speech and FDR’s first inaugural address in March 1933 (when, roughly three years into the Great Depression, a great many people were truly despairing of any prospect that things would get any better) and in the tone that each president tried to set from the get-go.
Here’s FDR:
I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.
Here’s Oby:
That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.
Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious, and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met.
Several commentators seemed disappointed that Oby’s relatively “ascetic” inaugural remarks seemed a bit short on the soaring oratory that had more than once turned both voters and pundits into putty in his hands. Personally, I thought the speech was eloquent in its simplicity and right on the mark in its blend of genuine candor and quiet confidence. Ol’ Oby’s prodigious oratin' skills didn’t just suddenly desert him. He knew exactly what he was doing. It was high time, may even a little past high time, to throttle back on the mesmerizing rhetoric that had left untold Kool-Aid-swilling millions absolutely convinced that at the merest twitch of Oby’s earlobe, oceans of bad debt would recede, Bernie would return every cent he “made-off “with, and Detroit would suddenly start producing cars that even Nagoya and Stuttgart would be proud to claim.
Much like the anxiety-ridden Americans huddled around their Philcos and Atwater Kents and hanging on FDR’s every word way back in 1933, what we want so desperately right now is to feel some of what wild and crazy ol’ Al Greenspan once called “irrational exuberance” in the face of circumstances that really call for the healthy slice of realism leavened with some low-key self-assurance that Oby was serving up in his remarks. If the new prez’s message that this won’t be over tomorrow or the next day or the next month or perhaps even the next year needed any affirmation, the Dow’s downright disrespectful 332-point inaugural nosedive surely supplied it.
It was disappointing to see that the chief Justice of the Supreme Court apparently considered the occasion august enough to don his robe, but couldn’t bother himself to learn the presidential oath or write it on his palm, for God’s sake. Nor did it thrill me that Rick Warren apparently can’t get through a single prayer without warning us that the only valid tickets to Glory land have to be punched by his personal made-to-specs Jesus. I hope old Rick’s “Depends” were cinched up good and snug when Oby came out with that line about ours being “a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and [gasp!] nonbelievers.” Finally, believe it or not, I was also dismayed that some folks disrupted what a friend on the scene described as “the overwhelming civility” of the occasion because they couldn’t let the outbound “W” get out of town with tossing a few taunts at him.
Despite all this, Tuesday seemed like one of those rare occasions when much of what’s best about our country is on simultaneous display. The way we go about deciding who leads us can get a little ugly sometimes, but I still maintain that the way we go about installing the leaders we choose is way cool. Things would be cooler still, of course, if we recognized that changing the way we are governed won’t accomplish much unless we are ready to change our own priorities and expectations. Barry O. pretty much nailed the fundamental lesson of the Bush years when he reminded us that:
The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.
The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart—not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
As I listened to #44 explain how we came to the brink of disaster and emphasize how much a truly meaningful economic recovery depends on regaining our sense of national purpose as well, I couldn’t help but think he might be channeling ol’ #32 (and technically, I suppose, #33-35 as well), who, as he addressed a country long since toppled over that brink and mired chin-deep in the Slough of Despond, also assured his fellow Americans that “these dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and our fellow men.”
Ps. You can read Oby’s utterances in full here and listen to FDR’S here, or you could just stop by my place. I do a mean Frankie D., if I do say so myself
