It would not be inapt to apply to Barack Obama's inauguration on Tuesday the relief expressed dramatically by President Gerald Ford in 1974 as the shamed President Richard Nixon vanished from Washington in disgrace.
"My fellow Americans," Ford said, "our long national nightmare is over."
By any account, President Obama literally is riding to the rescue of a nation plunging into a calamitous low point in its history, the result of eight years of perversions of public service by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in their hunger to create a more powerful presidency.
Indeed, it's been a long, long national nightmare of lies, chaotic management of two wars, abuse of the U.S. Constitution, kidnapping and torture of suspected terrorists, wiretapping, cronyism bordering on criminality, bankrupt spending, corruption of the Justice Department, abuse of the environment, massive joblessness, collapse of the financial markets, indifference to congressional oversight, and powerful appointees whose credentials were evangelical beliefs not professional competence. There's seemingly no end to the particulars of the calculated destruction of law and civility in Washington.
The tireless 11th hour Bush-Cheney pageantry to create a fantasy record of achievement and noble service is futile. The public isn't buying it. U.S. history's palpably worst president and vice president leave office with approval ratings just above 20 percent—and still sinking. A growing chorus in Congress and the public also favors war crimes trials.
The incoming 44th president, however, arrives on the scene bathed in popularity polls in the 80th percentile, a combination of his integrity and believability plus the public's yearning for an end to the devastating Bush-Cheney reign.
Make no mistake. The new commander-in-chief has inherited catastrophes on a wide front. This new president will not sugarcoat the crises Americans face. He will ask for sacrifices of painful proportions. Congress as well as governors and mayors will need to set aside partisan instincts and work on rescue plans not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Yet, as crushing as this burden is, Obama brings to his office something not seen in recent years--a quiet, poised and reassuring self-confidence and eloquence, candor and honesty, personal warmth and a nonpartisan collegiality that instinctively inspires hope and faith.
Only blundering political throwbacks to another day will dare ignore the national call to emergency action and try to sabotage the best efforts of the young new president who happily places his country ahead of the hunger for power.
