After celebration, time to work

Our Voice

By: Hickory Daily Record Editorial | Hickory Daily Record
Published: January 20, 2009

There hasn't been a national celebration like the inauguration of Barack Obama since VJ Day in 1945.

There have been many events celebrated on enormous scales. The Peace March on Washington, the D.C. rally when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his poignant "I Have A Dream" speech, the U.S. Bicentennial that encompassed America for months in 1976.

But today's inauguration is the biggest celebration of all. It represents achieving the dream for many people. It harbors hopes for a brighter future. It is a changing of the guard in the nation's capital that heralds new policies, a different direction and possibly reclaimed prosperity.

Only two inaugurals in recent memory have been so laden with hope: John Kennedy's in 1961, and Ronald Reagan's in 1981.

Now, we reach another 20-year interval, and Americans pray the inauguration launches greatness on a scale that surpasses that which Kennedy and Reagan contrived.

Times were troubled when Kennedy and Reagan swore their presidential oaths. The Cold War numbed the entire world in 1961. The battle for universal quality and opportunity in the United States was beginning in earnest.

Kennedy promised America would reach a New Frontier that would improve everyone's lives, extol democratic virtues and position the United States as the leader of the free world and communism's most terrible arch enemy.

Reagan vowed to expand American power to unprecedented heights and beat Cold War swords into plowshares from a position of strength. Terrorism must be negated, he said, and communism must not prevail.

In the years after the Kennedy and Reagan inaugurations, America became a nation of civil rights, minorities and poor people were empowered, the American Dream was put in reach of everyone. The Berlin Wall fell, the Evil Empire perished in Europe and terrorism was pushed into shadowy corners. Business boomed.

But prejudice still exists in some circles, poverty and disease are global epidemics and terrorists have fashioned an empire of violence. The economy struggles, dimming the glow of opportunity and achievement.

So, Americans look to a new president for leadership, a new administration for answers and a new vista of peace and prosperity. The nation longs to restore the attitude under Kennedy labeled Camelot.

All hopes rest with the man at the center of an historic inauguration. Americans realize that the expectations given to Barack Obama are expectations they must themselves shoulder.

Today is the time for celebration. Tomorrow is the time go to work. Much has been said of Obama's regard for Abraham Lincoln. We also remember Kennedy's words.

"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

The nation will need that kind of commitment from all of us. President Obama cannot succeed alone.