President Obama’s Second Inaugural Address: A heartening, uplifting call for progress

Four years ago, I stood on the Nation­al Mall in our nation’s cap­i­tal and wit­nessed the swear­ing-in of Barack Oba­ma as the forty-fourth Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. It was a his­toric day — a hap­py and joy­ous day that offered a wel­come respite from weeks of bad eco­nom­ic news and feel­ings of uncertainty.

Near­ly two mil­lion peo­ple stood shoul­der to shoul­der that cold Jan­u­ary morn­ing, wait­ing for our nation’s first black pres­i­dent take the oath and deliv­er his first inau­gur­al address. As noon came and went, the real­iza­tion hit home for me and oth­ers stand­ing on the Mall: The Bush error was final­ly at an end. A new era had begun. A new chap­ter in our nation’s his­to­ry was about to be written.

When Pres­i­dent Oba­ma stepped to the micro­phone that day four years ago to deliv­er his first inau­gur­al address, he seemed mind­ful of his new and enor­mous respon­si­bil­i­ties. He imme­di­ate­ly assumed the role of Reas­sur­er-in-Chief, remind­ing us that Amer­i­ca has been through tough times before, and has come out ahead.

I espe­cial­ly remem­ber these words: “Today, I say to you that the chal­lenges we face are real. They are seri­ous and they are many. They will not be met eas­i­ly or in a short span of time. But know this, Amer­i­ca: They will be met.”

Four years lat­er, those words car­ry even greater sig­nif­i­cance and mean­ing than they did then, con­sid­er­ing what has tran­spired in the time between the Pres­i­den­t’s First Inau­gur­al Address and his Sec­ond today. Though Barack Oba­ma repeat­ed­ly called for uni­ty and coop­er­a­tion as a can­di­date, as Pres­i­dent-elect, and final­ly as Pres­i­dent, his efforts to find com­mon ground were stymied from the begin­ning by Repub­li­cans, who spurned his over­tures and wast­ed lit­tle time in declar­ing that their top pri­or­i­ty was his defeat — not the coun­try’s well-being.

No pres­i­dent has gov­erned with­out oppo­si­tion, but few pres­i­dents have had to deal with the kind of dis­loy­al, knee-jerk obstruc­tion­ism that Barack Oba­ma has faced from Repub­li­cans in Con­gress, not to men­tion the Repub­li­can Par­ty and its hate speech fueled noise machine out­side of Congress.

The Pres­i­dent enters his sec­ond term old­er and wis­er. Four years ago, the Pres­i­dent did not ini­tial­ly appre­ci­ate that Repub­li­cans were sim­ply not inter­est­ed in work­ing with him to solve Amer­i­ca’s prob­lems. He tried many times to be accom­mo­dat­ing, and as a con­se­quence, he end­ed up nego­ti­at­ing from a posi­tion of weak­ness when he could have been nego­ti­at­ing from a posi­tion of strength.

In his First Inau­gur­al Address, the Pres­i­dent spoke of Amer­i­ca as on a jour­ney. (All empha­sis in the fol­low­ing excerpt and the oth­er excepts in this post is mine).

In reaf­firm­ing the great­ness of our nation we under­stand that great­ness is nev­er a giv­en. It must be earned. Our jour­ney has nev­er been one of short-cuts or set­tling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-heart­ed, for those that pre­fer leisure over work, or seek only the plea­sures of rich­es and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-tak­ers, the doers, the mak­ers of things — some cel­e­brat­ed, but more often men and women obscure in their labor — who have car­ried us up the long rugged path towards pros­per­i­ty and freedom.

He went on to say:

This is the jour­ney we con­tin­ue today. We remain the most pros­per­ous, pow­er­ful nation on Earth. Our work­ers are no less pro­duc­tive than when this cri­sis began. Our minds are no less inven­tive, our goods and ser­vices no less need­ed than they were last week, or last month, or last year.  Our capac­i­ty remains undi­min­ished. But our time of stand­ing pat, of pro­tect­ing nar­row inter­ests and putting off unpleas­ant deci­sions — that time has sure­ly passed.  Start­ing today, we must pick our­selves up, dust our­selves off, and begin again the work of remak­ing America.

Four years lat­er, we can say that we have begun that work of remak­ing Amer­i­ca. But unpleas­ant deci­sions con­tin­ue to be put off, and nar­row inter­ests con­tin­ue to be pro­tect­ed… most recent­ly in the leg­is­la­tion the Pres­i­dent signed to extend the Bush tax cuts for all but the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans. Old habits die hard, as the say­ing goes, and the same could be said of old politics.

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma returned to his This is the jour­ney we con­tin­ue today metaphor for his Sec­ond Inau­gur­al Address, a speech that I very much enjoyed and that I hope serves as a har­bin­ger of things to come. I felt it was heart­en­ing and uplift­ing; the Pres­i­dent skill­ful­ly avoid­ed sound­ing lofty or grandiose. The Pres­i­dent made the most of an oppor­tu­ni­ty to set a new tone for a new term, and he embraced the log­ic of pro­gres­sive val­ues at sev­er­al key points in the speech. He began with a nod to our found­ing doc­u­ments — the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence and the Constitution:

Each time we gath­er to inau­gu­rate a Pres­i­dent we bear wit­ness to the endur­ing strength of our Con­sti­tu­tion. We affirm the promise of our democ­ra­cy. We recall that what binds this nation togeth­er is not the col­ors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the ori­gins of our names. What makes us excep­tion­al — what makes us Amer­i­can — is our alle­giance to an idea artic­u­lat­ed in a dec­la­ra­tion made more than two cen­turies ago:

“We hold these truths to be self-evi­dent, that all men are cre­at­ed equal; that they are endowed by their Cre­ator with cer­tain unalien­able rights; that among these are life, lib­er­ty, and the pur­suit of happiness.”

Today we con­tin­ue a nev­er-end­ing jour­ney to bridge the mean­ing of those words with the real­i­ties of our time. For his­to­ry tells us that while these truths may be self-evi­dent, they’ve nev­er been self-exe­cut­ing; that while free­dom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His peo­ple here on Earth.

And then he remind­ed us that, as a nation, we have often had to con­front adver­si­ty and prej­u­dice in attempt­ing to live up to our ideals.

Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union found­ed on the prin­ci­ples of lib­er­ty and equal­i­ty could sur­vive half-slave and half-free. We made our­selves anew, and vowed to move for­ward together.

Togeth­er, we deter­mined that a mod­ern econ­o­my requires rail­roads and high­ways to speed trav­el and com­merce, schools and col­leges to train our workers.

Togeth­er, we dis­cov­ered that a free mar­ket only thrives when there are rules to ensure com­pe­ti­tion and fair play.

Togeth­er, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vul­ner­a­ble, and pro­tect its peo­ple from life’s worst haz­ards and misfortune.

The strength of this coun­try, the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, stems from our abil­i­ty to do great things togeth­er, as the Pres­i­dent said. Coop­er­a­tion trumps com­pe­ti­tion. Had the thir­teen colonies that broke away from Great Britain ceased to remain unit­ed fol­low­ing the War of Inde­pen­dence, this coun­try, as we know it, would not and could not exist today. And had Abra­ham Lin­coln not suc­ceed­ed in hold­ing the Union togeth­er, our nation might well have con­tin­ued to splin­ter and frag­ment, and the evil insti­tu­tion of slav­ery would not have been abol­ished when it need­ed to be.

I felt the speech hit three real­ly high notes, twice mid­way through and once again at the end. The first pas­sage that res­onat­ed deeply with me was a defense of our nation’s essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices — specif­i­cal­ly Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare — which the Pres­i­dent laud­ably framed as com­mit­ments.

We do not believe that in this coun­try free­dom is reserved for the lucky, or hap­pi­ness for the few. We rec­og­nize that no mat­ter how respon­si­bly we live our lives, any one of us at any time may face a job loss, or a sud­den ill­ness, or a home swept away in a ter­ri­ble storm. The com­mit­ments we make to each oth­er through Medicare and Med­ic­aid and Social Secu­ri­ty, these things do not sap our ini­tia­tive, they strength­en us. They do not make us a nation of tak­ers; they free us to take the risks that make this coun­try great.

The sec­ond pas­sage that made me cheer was the Pres­i­den­t’s call for action on the cli­mate cri­sis — a threat human­i­ty has so far failed to mean­ing­ful­ly address.

We, the peo­ple, still believe that our oblig­a­tions as Amer­i­cans are not just to our­selves, but to all pos­ter­i­ty.  We will respond to the threat of cli­mate change, know­ing that the fail­ure to do so would betray our chil­dren and future gen­er­a­tions. Some may still deny the over­whelm­ing judg­ment of sci­ence, but none can avoid the dev­as­tat­ing impact of rag­ing fires and crip­pling drought and more pow­er­ful storms.

The path towards sus­tain­able ener­gy sources will be long and some­times dif­fi­cult. But Amer­i­ca can­not resist this tran­si­tion, we must lead it. We can­not cede to oth­er nations the tech­nol­o­gy that will pow­er new jobs and new indus­tries, we must claim its promise. That’s how we will main­tain our eco­nom­ic vital­i­ty and our nation­al trea­sure — our forests and water­ways, our crop lands and snow-capped peaks. That is how we will pre­serve our plan­et, com­mand­ed to our care by God. That’s what will lend mean­ing to the creed our fathers once declared.

And the third pas­sage that hit home for me was the Pres­i­den­t’s call for all of us to leave a lega­cy for our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, befit­ting of the lega­cy that was left to us by pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions of Americans.

We, the peo­ple, declare today that the most evi­dent of truths –- that all of us are cre­at­ed equal –- is the star that guides us still; just as it guid­ed our fore­bears through Seneca Falls, and Sel­ma, and Stonewall; just as it guid­ed all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left foot­prints along this great Mall, to hear a preach­er say that we can­not walk alone; to hear a King pro­claim that our indi­vid­ual free­dom is inex­tri­ca­bly bound to the free­dom of every soul on Earth.

It is now our generation’s task to car­ry on what those pio­neers began. For our jour­ney is not com­plete until our wives, our moth­ers and daugh­ters can earn a liv­ing equal to their efforts. Our jour­ney is not com­plete until our gay broth­ers and sis­ters are treat­ed like any­one else under the law –- for if we are tru­ly cre­at­ed equal, then sure­ly the love we com­mit to one anoth­er must be equal as well. Our jour­ney is not com­plete until no cit­i­zen is forced to wait for hours to exer­cise the right to vote. Our jour­ney is not com­plete until we find a bet­ter way to wel­come the striv­ing, hope­ful immi­grants who still see Amer­i­ca as a land of oppor­tu­ni­ty — until bright young stu­dents and engi­neers are enlist­ed in our work­force rather than expelled from our coun­try. Our jour­ney is not com­plete until all our chil­dren, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia, to the qui­et lanes of New­town, know that they are cared for and cher­ished and always safe from harm.

Lin­guis­ti­cal­ly and metaphor­i­cal­ly, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma could have gone in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion with his Sec­ond Inau­gur­al Address, but he chose to build upon — rather than depart from — the foun­da­tion he cre­at­ed with his First Inau­gur­al Address four years ago. Today’s speech felt very much like a sequel to what I heard four years ago. It was rein­forc­ing and reassuring.

Amer­i­ca is on a jour­ney… a nev­er-end­ing jour­ney, a dif­fi­cult jour­ney with unfore­seen twists and turns, but a jour­ney we are nev­er­the­less bound to con­tin­ue, for our jour­ney is not com­plete until our coun­try ful­ly embod­ies our finest tra­di­tion­al val­ues… the very best of who we are. That seemed to me to be the crux of what the Pres­i­dent was say­ing today. We can either go for­ward or back­ward, and we cer­tain­ly don’t want to go back. So the only direc­tion to go is forward.

Or, as George Lakoff put it six years ago when he wrote Whose Free­dom?

Pro­gres­sive free­dom is dynam­ic free­dom. Free­dom is real­ized not just in sta­sis, or at a sin­gle moment in his­to­ry, but in its expan­sion over a long time. You can­not look only at the Found­ing Fathers and stop there. If you do, it sounds as if they were hyp­ocrites: They talked lib­er­ty but per­mit­ted slav­ery; they talked democ­ra­cy but allowed only white male prop­er­ty own­ers to vote. But from a dynam­ic pro­gres­sive per­spec­tive, the great ideas were expand­able free­doms: expand­ing civ­il rights, vot­ing rights, prop­er­ty rights, tol­er­ance, edu­ca­tion, sci­ence, pub­lic health, work­ers’ rights, pro­tect­ed park­land, and the infra­struc­ture for pro­gres­sive free­dom — the bank­ing sys­tem, court sys­tem, trans­porta­tion sys­tem, com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem, uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem, sci­en­tif­ic research sys­tem, social ser­vices sys­tem, and all the oth­er aspects of the com­mon good that we use our com­mon wealth for. Expand­ing and deep­en­ing the ideas of the Found­ing Fathers is what dynam­ic pro­gres­sive free­dom is about.

Pro­gres­sives don’t look back­ward to before these free­doms were extend­ed to some “orig­i­nal” nascent idea frozen in time, and they don’t work to reverse these free­doms as rad­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives do. As times change, free­doms must expand — or they will con­tract. Free­dom does­n’t stand still. Rad­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives are not going away. If pro­gres­sives do not keep expand­ing Amer­i­can free­doms, rad­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives will con­tract them.

Those of us who tru­ly believe in the idea of a more per­fect union must lead the way for­ward so that Amer­i­can free­doms are expand­ed, not con­tract­ed. We are called to be men and women of action. That’s what it means to be an activist.

Lead­er­ship is about being in the van­guard. It’s about tak­ing com­mu­ni­ties… and cities… and coun­ties… and states… and a coun­try… to new heights. Set­ting a good exam­ple for our world. For human­i­ty. It is dif­fi­cult, tir­ing, and often thank­less work. But it is impor­tant work. It makes a difference.

It is on occa­sions like today that we get to see Pres­i­dent Oba­ma doing what he does best: Inspir­ing us to believe that mean­ing­ful pro­gres­sive change is pos­si­ble and attain­able. Now, it’s true that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is not the pro­gres­sive cham­pi­on that some activists antic­i­pat­ed he would be (or per­haps imag­ined that he would be) to be dur­ing his first pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. He did not gov­ern as a true and ful­ly com­mit­ted pro­gres­sive would gov­ern dur­ing his first term.

But his most deeply held val­ues are pro­gres­sive, and that is evi­dent from his ora­to­ry. When the Pres­i­dent deliv­ers a speech root­ed in the log­ic of pro­gres­sive val­ues like he did today, before a large audi­ence (mil­lions of peo­ple watched this speech!), he is advanc­ing the caus­es we here at NPI hold dear by encour­ag­ing peo­ple to think pro­gres­sive­ly — to think with a pro­gres­sive mindset.

We at NPI have dis­agreed with Pres­i­dent Oba­ma on many occa­sions these past four years. We feel, for instance, that the Pres­i­dent was wrong to over­rule EPA Admin­is­tra­tor Lisa Jack­son’s efforts to strength­en air qual­i­ty stan­dards and expand envi­ron­men­tal free­dom. We believe the Pres­i­dent should have sought autho­riza­tion from Con­gress to inter­vene in Libya. And while we are glad that the Pres­i­dent renounced tor­ture pri­or to tak­ing office and again after doing so, we remain dis­ap­point­ed that he did not act to hold his pre­de­ces­sor and his pre­de­ces­sor’s appointees account­able for hav­ing erod­ed and vio­lat­ed our civ­il liberties.

Four years ago, as the Bush error end­ed, we had high hopes and high expec­ta­tions for Barack Oba­ma’s pres­i­den­cy. Four years of knee-jerk, prac­ti­cal­ly unyield­ing obstruc­tion­ism from Repub­li­cans have tem­pered our expec­ta­tions for a sec­ond term. The House remains con­trolled by Repub­li­cans thanks in part to ger­ry­man­der­ing, and prospects for advanc­ing leg­is­la­tion like the DREAM Act or the DISCLOSE Act there seem pret­ty dim.

But Pres­i­dent Oba­ma does have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to help Nan­cy Pelosi rebuild a Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty in the U.S. House over the next two years if he choos­es. Sen­ate Democ­rats just proved that a tough map need not be a bar­ri­er to elec­toral suc­cess. And, hav­ing had to deal with a hos­tile House for two years, the Pres­i­dent knows what to expect over the course of the next twen­ty-four months, which is a good thing. So do his sup­port­ers: Boun­ti­ful ide­al­ism seems to have been replaced, to a degree, by sober real­ism. (Ide­al­ism mixed with real­ism yields pragmatism!)

In ret­ro­spect, the Pres­i­den­t’s first term accom­plish­ments don’t seem as small as we might think. No, the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act did­n’t get us as close to Medicare for All as it should have, and no, the Amer­i­can Recov­ery and Rein­vest­ment Act did not pro­vide for the lev­el of pub­lic invest­ment our coun­try need­ed to con­fi­dent­ly and expe­di­tious­ly shake free of the grip of a deep recession.

But that leg­is­la­tion still rep­re­sents mean­ing­ful progress.

And let’s not for­get the res­cue of the auto­mo­tive indus­try, the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the pas­sage of the New START treaty, the pas­sage of the Food Safe­ty Mod­ern­iza­tion Act, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion Act (which cre­at­ed Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren’s Con­sumer Finan­cial Pro­tec­tion Bureau) or the Small Busi­ness Jobs Act of 2010.

Much of the good leg­is­la­tion enact­ed in Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s first term made it to his desk dur­ing the first two years of his pres­i­den­cy. The final two years of his pres­i­den­cy could turn out to be equal­ly pro­duc­tive, if the Pres­i­dent lends his voice to fil­i­buster reform, ral­lies his par­ty to reclaim the U.S. House in 2014, and assists Michael Ben­net in build­ing an even stronger major­i­ty in the U.S. Senate.

The con­ven­tion­al wis­dom, of course, is that an incum­bent pres­i­den­t’s par­ty does­n’t usu­al­ly do well in midterm elec­tions. But there’s noth­ing more fun and more sat­is­fy­ing than turn­ing con­ven­tion­al wis­dom on its head. Judg­ing from the reac­tion of some of The Wash­ing­ton Post’s colum­nists (who did not care for the Pres­i­den­t’s Sec­ond Inau­gur­al Address), today’s speech was one for the ages.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Barack Oba­ma and Joe Biden on this Inau­gu­ra­tion Day 2013. Here’s to the next four years.