The inauguration of Barack Obama was a watershed moment for the United States and, at the risk of overstating the event, the world. President Obama faces enormous challenges, and it is important to remember that tens of millions of Americans voted for his opponent.
Nonetheless, there is a palpable feeling in the country that the ground has shifted, in a manner of speaking. What was once barely conceivable is today a reality. It took an extraordinary candidate, and a remarkable and unprecedented confluence of events, to create the conditions that would enable such a candidate to succeed.
President Obama may go down in history as an exceptional president. Or he may not. But the fact that he ascended to the presidency, with the enthusiastic support of tens of millions of white Americans, having come from relative obscurity and having overcome a powerful political force within his own party to do so, speaks to his tenacity, intelligence and drive.
The United States has always been amenable to change, and perhaps no other country in the world could have given rise to a Barack Obama. It is part of what makes the country so extraordinary.
But Americans have short attention spans, and the honeymoon period will be short indeed. As the country embarks on this chapter in its remarkable history, it is therefore worth pausing a moment to reflect on what has been achieved, even as the global challenges will soon obscure how extraordinary it is that a country embroiled in two wars abroad, against intractable zealots, and confronting an economy in peril, could elect so exceptional a candidate, born in Hawaii to a Kenyan father and an American mother, named Barack Hussein Obama.
Good luck, Mr. President.
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