Obama to World: 'We're Ready to Lead Again'
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Posted Tuesday, January 20, 2009 8:10 PM
Michael Hirsh for Newsweek magazine
It was all a bad dream. Or at least you can pretend it was. That was pretty much Barack Obama's message to the rest of the world in his inaugural address on Tuesday. Obama couldn't have been more clear if he had declared that he was filing for divorce from everything George W. Bush represented for the last eight years.
Jammed in among the throng on the national mall, which included many visiting foreigners, I was one of those who waited for that signature line we were sure would become our generation's "Ask not..." moment. It never really came. Instead the new president delivered a devastating repudiation of his predecessor's policies and this workmanlike message: "We are ready to lead once again."
Rather than evoke America's new rendezvous with destiny in lyrical but vague tones, Obama described the nation's challenge of "remaking" itself in clear but mostly negative terms: This, world, is what we will NOT do any longer. "We regard as false the choice between our safety and our ideals," Obama said. In other words, no more waterboarding. "Our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause." In other words, we'll no longer go tearing off into new wars no one else supports and we can't afford.
And in perhaps his most complete annulment of Bush's legacy--and what may have been his best line--Obama told the haters of America, the evil-doers Bush refused to speak to, that "we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist." The German woman standing next to me cheered wildly when she heard Obama conclude, "...nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect."
It wasn't poetry. But to foreign ears, it was all music. Just as important, it is a clean slate. And maybe that's enough for now.
Rather than evoke America's new rendezvous with destiny in lyrical but vague tones, Obama described the nation's challenge of "remaking" itself in clear but mostly negative terms: This, world, is what we will NOT do any longer. "We regard as false the choice between our safety and our ideals," Obama said. In other words, no more waterboarding. "Our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause." In other words, we'll no longer go tearing off into new wars no one else supports and we can't afford.
And in perhaps his most complete annulment of Bush's legacy--and what may have been his best line--Obama told the haters of America, the evil-doers Bush refused to speak to, that "we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist." The German woman standing next to me cheered wildly when she heard Obama conclude, "...nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect."
It wasn't poetry. But to foreign ears, it was all music. Just as important, it is a clean slate. And maybe that's enough for now.
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