Regarding the Inauguration of
Barack Obama

Just before the ceremonies begun

I have anticipated the moment that's about to happen since 1972, when I cast my first vote for president in a primary election. Just before last year's primary, someone asked me if I was to cast my first vote for a woman or an African American. Neither, I said. I had already done both at once when I voted for Shirley Chisholm 36 years before. I was but 19 then. Some suggested I squandered my vote. No. I, as many other Americans, were planting seeds. Each seed grew into a field of flowers to help make this day possible.

In my lifetime, we have put a man on the moon, and now we are about to put an African American in the White House. We can be proud of both. These are both great American moments and events in which the world has or will watch. The order is telling. It is telling too that so far, we have not put a woman on the moon or in the White House. Women are at the threshold—flying in the space shuttle, nearly in the November elections, serving as Speaker of the House. We know the prize will come to them too.

However, the victories we have yet to reach do not diminish the ones we have had already, including the one we will have today. I have never seen so much anticipation and so much hope placed on an incoming president. Everywhere you go, you taste it. People are giddy. Though a few seem resigned—resigned with hope nevertheless. Casual conversations overhead in public places set a high bar for what this new president will accomplish.

It is as if a person who preformed the miracle of being the first African American as president can now set off and perform all the other miracles we need done. Our economy is entering the greatest fiscal crisis since the Great Depression. The environment is lurching towards the greatest crisis in the history of mankind—one, which if unanswered will bring down world civilization. Only one in two children graduate high school in many big cities. Sometimes, just one in four. Our nation cannot hope to endure for long with so much potential lost. We are at war—in a war to help secure our financial interest that has doubled our national debt.

Any one of these challenges are enough to fully preoccupy a presidential administration. What we hope for is a a president who can rise up to all these challenges, like an adept performer juggling live grenades. No matter how hard we hope, this is beyond what one man can do.

Imagine, how we are each bombarded with pleas for help, to save the whales and the rain forest, to find the cure, to bring dignity to workers, to end discrimination that even today haunts our nation, to feed the hungry, to stop climate change, to help seniors, children and troubled youth, to help the abused and single moms.

There is no end of earth-shaking crises and heart-breaking causes. Though some more are urgent than others, each is worthy. In the cacophony of pleas, we toss out unopened letters, delete unread e-mail, mute TV ads and flip past print ads. It's all too much. We need to keep our own lives on track. After that, it's easier to concern ourselves with celebrity affairs and griping about preempted TV shows. These problems can't hurt us and there's nothing we can do about them—so they are guiltless diversions.

Now put yourself in the White House—with an entire nation and much of the world hammering at your doors. Even if you could magically toss out every self-serving request, and focus only on the selfless ones, there are far too many issues, many far too serious and complex by themselves, for one administration to work through.

If there is but one miracle that Obama might perform, it is to wake America out of a stupor of mediocrity.

It is absolutely unacceptable that in the greatest nation on earth, one in two children do not graduate high school. It is unacceptable that so many young lives are squandered regardless the underlying cause. It is unacceptable that but one of our workers is abused, underpaid and uninsured. It is unacceptable that we import goods made by child labor and workers exposed to toxics. It is unacceptable that we are not showing the world to a path of a sustainable civilization, that lives in harmony with our oceans and climate. It is all unacceptable—and we seem to accept it. We are made numb by all the pleas.

If Obama is not just to be another voice in the wilderness crying out wolf, perhaps better than most, it is each of us who must be ready to awaken. We need to be ready to roll up our sleeves, the way soup kitchen workers did in the Great Depression, the way GIs and Rosie the Rivers did in WWII, the way the underground railroad did during slavery, the way countless Americans have and do.

We are past due on answering Kennedy's challenge, in what we can do for our country. Not just one of us, but each of us, we must all be ready. It is to Obama to inspire us and lead us in a common direction. WIthout us, he will not succeed. It is to us to be ready.

—Tom Politeo