I have been not been very caught up with the inaugural, in spite of my joy at the end of the Bush administration and all the work I did for Obama during the campaign. Maybe it's just age and cynicism creeping in. I have been disappointed so much over the years. Yesterday's We Are One celebration on the Mall in Washington, DC helped me overcome it. I was so glad that I went. I am really beginning to get what Obama is trying to do to move us past partisanship.
I have, surprisingly, not been very caught up with inauguration fever. I volunteered extensively during the campaign and I am an inaugural parade volunteer on Tuesday. I did venture down to the Mall yesterday for the We Are One celebration and what a wonderful event it was. I was too late to get onto the grounds of the Reflecting Pool, but I had a great view of the Jumbotron at the edge of the Washington Monument grounds.
The show was wonderful and pretty pitch perfect, from the music by Aaron Copeland to Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen's version of This Land is Your Land. The lineup was inspired and inspiring.
The show featured quotes, stories and film clips and was very inclusive. There was, of course, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Kennedy, but also quotes by Eisenhower and Reagan. There was a tribute to military families by Tiger Woods. At times I thought about the talk about freedom and what the Bush administration has done with our civil liberties. I thought about the arrogance of Americans, thinking that we are exceptional, but I also thought about our greatest leaders and what they have stood for. Of course, the giants of Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, the inspiring words of John F. Kennedy and, I must admit, even Ronald Reagan.
Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired U2 to write the song they sang yesterday and Rosa Parks was one of many who started the revolution that will culminate tomorrow. I was struck by how Marian Anderson, while denied the opportunity to sing at DAR Constitution Hall, sang to a huge crowd at the Lincoln Memorial and still sang a patriotic song. Yesterday was a real history lesson in the most positive sense. To see the formerly blacklisted Pete Seeger on the stage at 89 years old singing the great Woody Guthrie song to maybe his biggest crowd ever was very moving, as were many moments in the celebration. Most importantly, Obama really understands American history and our ideals.
The show yesterday drove home the point of what he is trying to do. He really does want to heal the divisions that have riven our country over the last few decades. I really get that now. He has an enormous task ahead of him. I'm not sure why it took a star-studded gala to make me realize it, but it did. I'm becoming a dewy-eyed optimist again.