Yes We Can Dare to Hope ... But We'll Need to Work Hard to Bring Real Change

By Stephen Zunes, AlterNet. Posted January 21, 2009.

I also knew that there were millions of people around the world excitedly watching the inauguration ceremony on television, from modern apartments in the Netherlands to remote villages in Kenya to the urban slums of Indonesia to the rubble of Gaza, who were thinking that maybe they could actually feel good about the United States again. I thought about how different it would now feel for me to show my U.S. passport going through customs in a foreign country and not feel embarrassed because of my president. 

Minutes after the end of the ceremony, with viewing areas for the inaugural parade down Pennsylvania Avenue already full, I asked a Secret Service agent about the possibility of hanging out at the corner of the mall by the National Gallery where the parade commenced. He said that it would be a great place to view where the floats and marching bands converged to start the parade, but that President Obama would be joining the procession a block north from that point at Pennsylvania Avenue. 

I paused. "President Obama." Only minutes old, the combination of that title and that name were the most beautiful words I could possibly hear, particularly after hearing so constantly for the past eight years the words "President Bush." I held onto my daughter and burst into tears. 

Goodbye Bush 

Obama has become president of the United States because rather than appealing to the worst instincts of American voters -- which had made possible the disastrous eight years of the Bush administration -- he appealed to our best instincts.

Instead of divisiveness, he offered unity. Instead of manipulating people's fear and prejudices, he offered a sense of hope and faith stemming from the most progressive and visionary aspects of our country's heritage. It was a message that inspired Kalila and so many other young people to help elect him president. It was a message that made it possible for a sometimes-cynical leftist like me to stand for hours in the cold on the Washington Mall and wave an American flag. 

Indeed, the only emotion that came close to the excitement of seeing Obama come to office was seeing George W. Bush leaving office. 

Soon after the end of the swearing-in ceremony, as the now ex-president lifted off in his helicopter from the Capitol grounds for Andrews Air Force Base to take the jet that would take him back home to Texas, hundreds of thousands of people on the mall started waving at the helicopter and joyously singing: "Nah-nah-nah-nah, nah-nah-nah-nah, hey hey hey, goodbye!"   

While Bush's departure alone is cause for celebration, Obama appears committed to not just ending some of the worst policies of the previous administration, but to forge ahead with new and better policies. 

A couple hours after the inauguration ceremony, I got a call on my cell phone from my eldest child Shanti from Bellingham, Wash., where she is a student in Western Washington University's community health program and serves as the assistant coordinator of the university's Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Alliance.

As someone who had been rather skeptical of Obama (and had voted for Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney in November), she was shedding tears of relief and amazement reading the new White House Web site's section on "Support for the LGBT Community." This often-critical observer of the political process was sharing her excitement as to how the United States now has an administration committed to supporting full civil unions, opposing bans on same-sex marriages, expanding adoption rights, promoting sex education and HIV-prevention efforts beyond the failed abstinence-only policies of the recent administration, as well as ending workplace discrimination for sexual orientation and gender identity. 

This dramatic policy shift serves to illustrate the fact that, while many of Obama's policies will disappoint, frustrate and anger many of us in the progressive movement, we should not fail to recognize that there will be some fundamental differences in the policies of the federal government on many levels; that, given the power of the American presidency, even minor differences in policies can have a positive impact on millions of lives and that while there are certain institutional imperatives that will inevitably limit the degree to which even the most enlightened administration can bring about a shift in priorities, this does not obscure the fact that, in terms of public policy, we are witnessing the most dramatic change in American leadership since Franklin D. Roosevelt succeeded Herbert Hoover in 1933.

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Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and chairman of Middle Eastern studies at the University of San Francisco and serves as a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus.

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