Inauguration

What a day.  Its hard to fully explain what it feels like to be in a crowd of some four million people and have near silence when a man most of us couldn't even see was speaking.  Inauguration 2009 was an impressive sight.  I left late last night with a few friends and we went to dinner on Capitol Hill and stayed over with a CUA grad who works in the area.  After a bit of a late start we left for the Capitol and entered the mass of people.  There truly was nothing that could have been done to make that process smooth, yet everyone was in high spirits and clearly very excited to be taking part in such a historic event.  I ended up standing in an area reserved for ticket holding visitors only (for the record I was not one of those people, Jim McGovern must have seen the R next to my name).  The spot was good and I had a clear view of the capitol building and could hear the speech pretty well.  Other than almost botching the oath of office President Obama did not disappoint.  His speech was poignant and interesting, showing his understanding of the unique times in which he has come to lead.

The thing that struck me the most though was wondering, "what is he thinking?"  As Obama stands there as President of the United States what is going through his mind.  How incredible must it be to stand in front of the entire nation, and the world at large and hear four million people scream your name?  It is moments such as these that I appreciate where I go to school and that I live in a nation where I can say that I want to be the President.  Although that dream may be a longshot it is nice to know that the only limitation on my progress is myself.

Finally I am struck by how poorly the Republican Party read the pulse of this nation over the past year.  We attempted to disqualify a man due to a lack of experience, ego, and race the very things this nation is supposed to enfranchise people to act regardless of.  Barack Obama elevated the level of game play from the mud slinging battles that were fought in 2000 and 2004.  This left the GOP and McCain in particular just the idiot was still sitting in the mud.  If the Republican Party is serious about becoming viable once again in national elections we first must decide what we believe.  In the words of Ronald Reagan we cannot be "all things to all people," as a collective group we need to stop being afraid of losing.  If we represent the ideology in which we believe than we have one.  Further we need to stop being the party of hate and focus on real issues instead of stressing what we are NOT.  Lastly we need to engage people in conversation on the real problems facing the nation: the economy, the environment, and national security.