Quote of the Day (Barack Obama, on the “New Era of Responsibility”)

“What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.”—Barack Obama, Presidential Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009

(How did Obama’s moment in the sun come off? Impressive—the best inaugural address, I’d say, since Kennedy’s, with the kind of self-confidence we look for in a leader along with a sense of sobriety about the number and nature of our challenges.

Since at least Theodore Roosevelt, Presidents have sought to characterize their programs with an overarching catchy title. Early on, it seemed to work: “Square Deal” (TR), “New Freedom” (Wilson), “New Deal” (FDR), “Fair Deal” (Truman), “New Frontier” (JFK), “Great Society” (LBJ).

From Nixon on, however, those catchphrases have had little lasting resonance: “The New Federalism” (Nixon), “The New Spirit” (Carter), “The New Covenant” (Clinton). Perhaps the impermanence of these phrases has something to do with the fracturing of consensus, the era of “petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics” to which Obama referred.

Will Obama’s program for “A New Era of Responsibility” take hold? Well, he has the best chance of anyone in a generation, at least. The American people are as eager for affirmative government as at any time in a generation—maybe since LBJ, even.

Oddly enough, his major troubles might not come from Republicans (who right now are reelling like ducks conked on the head, committing self-defeating blunders such as the “Puff the Magic Negro” parody) but from the fellow Democrats who are now in control of Congress.

Senators not only look in their mirrors and see a President (why do you think so many current and former ones made the long run for the Presidency last year?) but are notoriously touchy about their prerogatives. They didn’t line up like good soldiers for Carter and Clinton, and they may not be all that much more inclined to do so with Obama.

Not with Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff, anyway. The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan accused him of being the anonymous source who said the Clinton administration would “roll over [Moynihan] if we have to” on welfare reform—and Emanuel’s denials didn’t exactly ring true. When even Clinton diehard and CNN commentator Paul Begala describes his former colleague’s style as a “cross between a hemorrhoid and a toothache”—well, let’s just say it won’t always be fair weather between the administration and Capitol Hill.

“You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose,” Mario Cuomo said over 20 years ago. Yesterday, as he showed four and a half years ago in the Democratic Convention speech that made him a political supernova, Barack Obama proved he’s a Wordsworth among politicians.

We’re about to find out what kind of prose practitioner he is as a statesman—Ernest Hemingway or Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (you know—the guy who wrote an opening sentence to a novel, “It was a dark and stormy night,” that has inspired a bad-writing contest). We’d better hope he’s a master. Last night, I found myself nodding in agreement, for once in my life, with Donald Trump. If Obama is not great, he said, then we’re going to be in big trouble, given the mess we’re already in.