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I woke up this morning with that feeling of waking from a dream. The dim memory of something wonderful fading, a too bright sunlight arresting my reverie and calling me to the reality of the day. What happened? Was it real? Is it over? Will it last?
Oh, yes. Barack Obama was inaugurated as our 44th president yesterday. Four years ago, I heard his voice for the first time; it was exciting, but he was an unknown. Two years later he announced his candidacy; he was promising, but was he prepared? Yesterday he became my president. Oddly, I find that my misgivings related to his lack of experience have dropped away. After two years of watching him, my confidence in his ability to handle himself and to represent me has grown. My trust in his capacities is signficant. And yet—will his capacities be sufficient? Am I right about who he is and how he will behave?
In 2000, I voted for George W. Bush. He was my governor and I was impressed with his ability to transcend partisanship. I was excited for him to “transform the tone in Washington.” My former hopes are now so pathetic as to be laughable.
One of the things that I thought most important about my vote for Bush was that he would be the one selecting new Supreme Court justices. Although by that time I had soured on Bush, I later thrilled when John Roberts was appointed to the court. What I had not foreseen was how important the Attorney General, Secretary of Defense, and Vice Presidential nominations would be and how badly George Bush would get those wrong. I voted for Bush because I thought he was a good man. But in my memories of him, strong with the images of Abu Ghraib, the shame of Guantanamo, and the presidential power and torture memos, I struggle to figure out where my plan to elect a good man went wrong.
I did not vote for William Jefferson Clinton is 1992. However, over the first several years of his presidency, I began to admire him. I was impressed with the way he led our country, I liked how he spoke to our people, and I was thrilled at the prospect of peace in the Middle East in my lifetime. I began to trust him. He proved unworthy of my trust.
I am not a New Yorker, but I admired their attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, from afar. What a crusader for justice! What a passion for punishing the wrongdoer! It was so disappointing that he turned out to be a wrongdoer too.
I have a tendency to this. When I admire people, I give them a halo. I see perfection and I expect perfection. And then they fail. Because all idols have clay feet. This shouldn’t be so shocking. The overused example is David from the Bible. David was so good and he did so many good things . . . but also a couple of truly bad ones. If David fell, so can we all.
I disliked Robert Duvall’s movie, The Apostle. It is about a Southern preacher who has been betrayed. He discovers that his wife and the youth minister are sleeping together. Not only does she ask for divorce and custody of their children, but she and the youth minister she has been cheating with take control of the preacher’s church, shutting him out from what he built. Hardly a moral paragon himself, the preacher becomes enraged and swings a bat at the head of the youth minister (who later dies). The preacher flees town, changes identities, and starts over again, doing good works and struggling (and sometimes failing) to overcome his demons.
This could be a beautiful film about the power of redemption and atonement. But what I saw was a film that teaches we are all sinners. Of course—we are all sinners! What I object to is the message that sexual fidelity is impossible, that despite good works, underneath it all we are all vile sinners–with unchanging and unchangeable fallen natures. The preacher does good works as he builds a new church, but he is still a bad man. The film fails to take sin seriously, to say that sexual sins and the taking of a life are truly a big deal. Instead, the message is that these serious sins are just part of the human condition, something we must resign ourselves to expect in ourselves and others. But this is the wrong way to understand sin.
The Bible’s story of David is disturbing because he was so righteous and so close to God. Most of us would hardly dare compare ourselves to him. But if someone so righteous could mess up so badly, what hope is there for the rest of us—who are far less righteous? Yes, we all sin, and yes, it would be a mistake ever to consider ourselves safe from the temptation of serious sin, but is it a given that we are all fallen to the extent of David’s depravity? Is it unavoidable?
My answer is that it can’t be, or there wouldn’t be purpose in striving. If it isn’t possible to avoid serious sin, it is hard to see it as sin at all. If it isn’t possible to avoid sin, then there is little point in trying. We should just sit and wait for Jesus to save us. But surely he taught us to strive to be better. This doesn’t change our nature as fallen creatures, but it means that we need not assume we will always fall and always fail. It is possible for a fallen creature to love his neighbor as he loves himself. It is possible for a fallen creature to choose to turn the other cheek.
Stepping back from this extended tangent, are all politicians corrupt? Are they all closet Blagojeviches? or Bill Clintons? Or George Bushes? (Although incompetence is far less blameworthy–though no less disappointing–than other political failings, I don’t think the torture inflicted by the previous administration falls in the incompetence category.)
I hope not. If past performance is a reliable indicator of future results (and it often is), Barack Obama will disappoint me. He will disappoint me in ways that I cannot even guess at today–either because it will be in areas far from where I perceive his weaknesses to be or because the nature of the disappointment is so ironic (as with Bush and the struggle against partisanship in Washington). But today I fight to believe that serious disappointment is not inevitable. That clay feet do not mean clay brains, a clay heart, and clay hands. To be fair to Mr. Obama, I will adjust my expectations, yet I will still hope for the best, because yesterday was a beautiful dream, and I’m not ready to wake up.
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2 Responses to “The Day After”
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Yesterday was an incredible day. I could hardly watch the news this morning or read today’s NYTimes without having to hold back tears, my emotion surprises me.
I’ve thought about the very topic you are discussing a lot lately, will President Obama end up proving to be part of something corrupt at some point while he is President? Or will he be able to stay the man I see him as today? Obviously, I hope for the latter. In my heart of hearts I believe that he is different from what we are use to seeing in Washington, and I am excited and hopeful for change.
However, I worry that my expectations, and the Nation’s, are incredibly high right now and that they may be impossible to meet. I hope we are able to give Obama a chance.
I think it would be wrong to be a cynic about the president, though I have to confess I was something of a cynic about GWB from the beginning–but only something of one. We owe it to the president, whoever he is, to give him our trust and hope. Like many others, I think I have more hopes for President Obama than I have had for any other president. If he were to fail us, the tragedy would be all the greater. But we ought not to expect failure, and I see no reason to think we will see it.