Obama Promises New Destiny, Work Begins Today

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It is likely that when Obama said, "We only have one President at a time" during the transition, he actually meant, "I disagree with George Bush on that one." After all, he wasn't reticent about making his views known on the economic crisis or the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. The breaks with the past will be subtle but emphatic: I suspect an Obama Administration would have voted for the U.N.'s Gaza cease-fire resolution rather than abstaining as Bush's did. But all this will be done diplomatically. American foreign policy will be a direct reflection of the man who is now President — quiet, conciliatory, civilized. (See pictures of Mumbai picking up the pieces.)

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Toward the end of the campaign, Michelle Obama asked me if I was going to write a novel about them like Primary Colors, my satiric account of the 1992 presidential race. I was at a loss for words, in part because the thought hadn't even vaguely crossed my mind. "He can't write a novel about us," Barack Obama reassured his wife. "We're too boring." (See pictures of Michelle Obama's Jason Wu dress.)

Yes ... and no. It's hard to call the most exciting politician in decades boring. The millions who trekked to Washington for the Inauguration, who cried their eyes out and cheered their lungs raw, are testimony to the man's sheer inspirational power. Reagan's movement was called a revolution, but this may be more than that — the beginning of a whole new era of Obama-inspired and Obama-led citizen involvement. During the transition, the Obama website called for supporters to hold community meetings to discuss their health-care priorities. A staggering 10,000 meetings purportedly were held; 5,000 sent written reports — more paper! — to the transition office. This is a new kind of politics, with the potential to be the most powerful citizen army in U.S. history. If so, it will more likely be a force for civility — for "boring" things like good governance, for new ideas about how to control the cost of entitlements (which Obama pointedly mentioned in his speech) — rather than a rabble spamming the offices of recalcitrant Republicans. It will fit neatly into the Obama zeitgeist.

By the tone and style of his move to power, Obama has shown the world — and the people living in Sarah Palin's small-town America, and even many liberals who had lost hope over time — a new, gloriously unexpected and vibrant face of our country. The sheer fun of the Inauguration, the world-record number of interracial hugs and kisses, augurs a new heterodox cultural energy, a nation — as the man said — of mutts. Already the Obama ethos is slipping into the nation's cultural bloodstream — not just the interraciality but also the mind-blowing normality of the family: the fact that Michelle Obama brought Laura Bush a going-away present, the fact that Sasha and Malia will make their own beds in the White House, the fact that our President proudly wears a Chicago White Sox baseball cap when he goes to the gym. (See pictures of Sasha and Malia Obama at the inauguration.)

Even more important, Obama promises a respite from the nonstop anger of the recent American political wars, the beginning of an era of civility, if not comity. "What the cynics fail to understand," he said in his speech, "is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply."

It would be nice to think the magnitude of the problems facing the nation would lead to a minimum of puerile contentiousness, but vile still seems to be the default position for some of Obama's noisier detractors — "Obama Flubs the Oath" was the inaccurate headline greeting the new President on the Drudge Report. Too many of us in the media remain reluctant "to set aside childish things." Happily, though, our new President seems to have an honest predilection for treating his opponents with respect. He seems intent on hearing their points of view and arguing, decorously, with them — that's why he accepted a dinner invitation at conservative columnist George Will's house. This is radical behavior in the village on the Potomac. It could force everyone to argue more carefully, to think twice before casting aspersions, to remember that the goal has to be more than temporal electoral victories — but, in this moment of peril, a better and stronger nation, a less ugly and dangerous world.

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