Pop Goes Washington

That concert also showed, though, that you can't just wish acrimony away. There was an immediate controversy when a prayer by gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson was left off the HBO broadcast. There's a whole talk-show industry devoted to feeding those "stale political arguments." And we've seen overblown predictions before that events would ennoble American culture--see, again, 9/11.

But if Obama can turn a feel-good moment into improbable changes in our discourse, he might be helped by something that helped him pull off an improbable win: the Internet. It's true that new media have helped polarize politics by creating echo chambers of agreement. But the kind of social media the Obama campaign used, like Facebook, also help people broaden their spheres and see how they are connected with people who are different from them. And they're popular among the same young people who are turned off by the old political dualisms and categories.

Some of us, of course, will believe that change when we see it. Maybe we're the ones Obama had in mind when he said, "What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them." Whether Obama can affect that shift--and where those tectonic plates carry him, and us--is the next big story of our frightened, giddy culture.

See pictures of Barack Obama's Inauguration.

See pictures of people around the world watching Obama's inauguration.