Obama’s first inauguration should have been a cause for unvarnished joy. After all, the country had broken its most obvious social barrier and elected a supremely gifted black man as its leader; in addition, there was bipartisan acknowledgment of the failures of the outgoing administration. The economy was falling off a cliff, however, and the immediate future looked very dark, indeed. Obama’s speech was more chilly and grim than inspiring. It was a strange time.
Today, we celebrate the democratic ritual of a transition of power with the pandemic, the economic downturn, and the storming of the Capitol as our background. A field of American flags will replace what would have been a very large crowd. We will be getting rid of the man on golf cart, but the millions of voters and the media infrastructure that made him possible are still firmly in place, and a comeback is not completely out of the question.
It will be a bittersweet moment.