WASHINGTON — Barack Obama staged his arrival in Washington to evoke
Abraham Lincoln’s, but the historical echo is faint. Lincoln’s famous train
ride to his 1861 inauguration traversed a landscape of bitterness and
strife. He had to speed through Baltimore “like a thief in the night” for
fear of riots and possible assassination. Obama, by contrast, was met by
tens of thousands of Baltimoreans who braved subfreezing temperatures to
cheer the new president. As Obama made his way to the capital, he crossed a
landscape of hope.
Rarely has a new presidency been greeted with such a consensus of
goodwill — and rarely has a new president so needed it.
The importance of Obama’s mind-blowing historical breakthrough can
hardly be overstated. Slavery vexed the Founding Fathers; if not for
Lincoln’s iron determination, it would have ripped the nation apart. For
nearly a century after African-Americans were freed from bondage, American
society still relegated us to a corner reserved for second-class citizens.
Having a black man as president does not magically eliminate racial
disparities in income or wealth; it does not fix inner-city schools, repair
crumbling neighborhoods or heal dysfunctional families. Psychologically,
though, it changes everything.
Our mental furniture is being rearranged. The advent of Obama’s
presidency brings the African-American experience to center stage, but does
so in a way that allows society to congratulate itself on having come so
far. The implications for black Americans are even more profound, because
seeing Obama in the White House obliterates any logic behind self-imposed
limits on imagination and ambition.
These are huge impacts — which makes it ironic that, in the end, race
is likely to be secondary in defining Obama’s place in history.
Since Obama’s election, I’ve heard more than one friend joke
sardonically that the nation has said sure, a black man can run the
country, go right ahead and take your turn — now that the economy is in
the tubes, the financial system is a wreck, we’re mired in two wars, global
warming is parboiling the planet, the government has been forced to spend a
trillion dollars or more just to stave off utter ruin and there’s precious
little money left to finance desperately needed reforms in health care,
education, energy, infrastructure …
Expectations that Obama will be able to solve this daunting array of
problems are strikingly high. A new Washington Post poll finds that 61
percent of Americans have a “good amount” or “great deal” of confidence
that Obama will make the right decisions for the country. A remarkable 72
percent are “fairly” or “very” confident that Obama’s economic program —
whatever it ultimately turns out to be — will improve the economy.
An Associated Press poll reports that 65 percent of Americans believe
Obama will be an “above average” president, including 28 percent who expect
him to be “outstanding.” Almost two-thirds of Americans, the AP finds,
believe their own financial situation will improve during the Obama
administration.
The conventional wisdom is that Obama risks losing public support
through disillusionment as people discover that he can’t wave a magic wand
and make everything better. But the conventional wisdom has been wrong
about Obama so many times over the past year that I use it more as a guide
to what’s (BEG ITAL)not(END ITAL) likely to happen.
The truth is that no one knows whether Barack Obama will be a good
president, much less a great president. All that anyone, including Obama,
can be sure of is that his will be a consequential presidency — an
important piece of knowledge. It took the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to
broaden the scope and ambition of George W. Bush’s presidency, for better
or worse. Obama takes office knowing beyond all doubt that he has no choice
but to swing for the fences.
Two years ago, as Obama was launching his campaign — over the
objections of the Democratic Party establishment, which was still listening
to the conventional wisdom — I interviewed him in his Senate office. I was
struck by his confidence and his conviction that this was his time, and
especially by how unflappable he appeared to be. I saw him last week, after
a campaign that had the rest of us on the edge of our seats for months and
months, and he seemed temperamentally unchanged.
Our new president is a man who knows exactly who he is. The nation,
filled with hope, is about to find out.
Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com.