President Barack Obama started paragraphs with three words, “We, the people,” time after time in his second inaugural speech Monday. BUT SURELY he is right to warn that the nation can only make progress on making the necessary root and branch reforms in our tax structure and our entitlement programs; in reducing the national debt and dealing with the glaring inequities in our society through non-confrontational discussion and compromise.
It was a call to the nation’s Republicans to set aside partisanship and work with the administration for the good of the people as a whole.
Perhaps this statement summed up his argument:
“ . . . A decade of war is now ending. An economic recovery has begun. America’s possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it — so long as we seize it together.
“For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class. We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work; when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship. We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God, but also in our own.”
The president followed this idealism with a call to hard work.
“ . . . We understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time. We must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, and reach higher.”
His speech was a statement of basic principles for all Americans, regardless of political party, religious faith or country of origin.
It didn’t lay out a laundry list of to-dos, though the president did promise to take action on climate change and did stress his conviction that the nation must take care of its elderly, “the generation which built this country, and must invest in the generation that will build its future.
“We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky or happiness for the few. . . 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.”
Those of a partisan bent will take those words as a challenge. Expect the conservative response to be a shrill new call for major cuts in the entitlement programs the president held up as strengtheners of our economy in his Monday address.
The way forward is to accept these challenges as bipartisan opportunities to solve problems rather than make political points.
Some sign from the other side of the aisle in Congress that this point is understood would give 2013 a cheery start.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
