Man in a Hurry: "a man who had already memorized a few lines that another had not"

NYT: January 20, 2009
Man in a Hurry
Timothy Egan

He seemed to stumble, just for an instant, in the gallop to get over the threshold during the transfer of power, after Chief Justice Roberts flubbed the words of the most powerful paragraph in the land. Taking the oath of office on Lincoln’s leather-bound bible, in a capital partially built by slaves, Barack Obama was a man in a hurry in an hour of peril. In that spirit, he was a man who had already memorized a few lines that another had not.

Thus, he moved quickly, in an 18-minute speech, to the theme that will carry or break the new president: sacrifice. The easy, the lazy, the days of quick riches and shortcuts, of excuses personal and political – over, he declared.

All great speeches, in their essence, are big stories, crafting an American narrative. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” as Joan Didion said. And to govern. As a writer and creator of a family narrative that allowed him to live with a unique background, Obama knows this. So there was no laundry list of policies to come. And almost no mention of that most overused of personal pronouns – I....

His very presence – that of “a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath” – was the most obvious of the stories told on this inauguration day.

The stories that ran through speech were ones that that led up to this day: people who crossed an ocean, bled in the snow, toiled in sweatshops, labored in anonymity to make something with their hands, stories that families tell in passing on their own mythologies.

From George Washington, he borrowed the message sent to a band of shivering rebels on a winter day, when a cause seemed lost.

From Franklin Roosevelt, he borrowed a rebuke of those who brought the nation to its knees, economically, and a call to acknowledge the obvious in the bad days that surround us....

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We all look for a story to inhabit, a summons. Obama gave us that summons — “the price and promise of citizenship” – in which there will be no free rides. But also gave us the story, his very presence, the living, breathing blueprint for the new politics of possibility.

http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/man-in-a-hurry /