Inaugural speech review

I just read the text of Obama’s Inaugural speech.  It’s very good, very strong, but some of what he describes as goals reflecting basic American values – and I agree with him – are going to have the folks who think they’re more equal than everyone else frothing at the mouth.  I particularly loved his grouping of “Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall” as great landmarks in the path to equality.  (Of course, he may not have written it himself, but I hope that somewhere his Toby is smoking a cigar and enjoying the praise of his fellows.  Although come to think of it, that particular line sounds a little more like Sam.)  This president gets it.  He and his people get that right now, people can work hard and still be poor.  They get that women don’t earn as much as men, and that’s not fair.  They get that you can do everything right and still get wiped out by illness or natural disaster.  They get that we’re driving away bright young minds who love this country as much as anyone else.  And they get that all this needs to be fixed if we are to be true to the ideals on which this country was founded.  Progress is slow, but it is steady, and the people who try to deny it are trying to hold back the tide with a sieve.  They had better learn to swim with the current, or they’re going to get dragged under – and when they do, this country will be there to make sure their basic needs are still met.

Josh: What do you say about a government that goes out of its way to protect even citizens that try to destroy it?

Toby: God bless America.

I took the time to go to whitehouse.gov and leave a note praising the speech – and yes, I expressed my admiration through a comparison to The West Wing.  I know that there have been truly great political speeches in the past, but I only know snippets of them, so the highest compliment I could honestly bestow was to say that it reads like something Toby and Sam would have written for Bartlet.

Anyway, it looks like the President is coming out swinging for this new term, and I say more power to him.  It’s time to stop letting the Tea Partiers and Christian Right (who are neither) hold the moderate majority of this country hostage because they can shout the loudest.  It’s time to stop letting the 1% have a stranglehold on everyone else’s lives because they can buy the most lobbyists (and, let’s face it, politicians).  Obama’s calling for an internal crusade in defense of American ideals, and I hope he’s going to get it.

I plan to do my share.