What Obama Should Have Said

I've been picking at Barack Obama's sad, flat inaugural address, and I will continue tomorrow. But maybe the thing that bugs me most about it is the squandered opportunity to say what he could have said - indeed what he was almost obliged to say. Imagine if instead of all that weary bumf about storm clouds and rising waters he had offered the words that all America was waiting to hear ... something perhaps like this:

My fellow citizens. Today, on the steps of this Capitol built by the labor of slaves, I see before me millions of faces, male and female, young and old, of every race and form. But it is not only these faces that I see. Beyond them I see the great monuments of our republic: the memorial to the Virginian slaveholder who declared that all men are created equal and trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just;  the great column to the memory of the general and president who laid down his army and his power when his time was done; and beyond them the white marble seat of Abraham Lincoln. From where I stand, my eyes are aligned with his. And I want to say to him today, if he can watch and hear: From this Capitol, you once pledged with malice to none and charity to all, to bind the nation’s wounds and finish the work we are in. We in our millions are here to answer, Father Abraham, Your work has been finished, our wounds are healed.

And I want to say to another man, who once also fixed his face upon this Capitol front: The day you prophesied has come. We, all of us, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, can together say: "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
Our American story was once divided. It is now united. We are one people – and as one people we confront the grave new problems of our time.

At that point, normal Democratic boondoggling could have resumed - and who would have minded?