find myself begrudgingly agreeing with most of it, though it will be weeks before I feel adult enough to admit that out loud. He says that the story of America is “the story of a slave-holding society that became a servant of freedom.” I can’t stomach unquestioning jingoism today, so I’m relieved that he refers to the slaves. That’s where my head’s at right now—that mentioning the slaves would cheer me up. It’s a reminder that, hey, we enslaved people, we deserve to have this guy be our president.
This part of Bush’s speech isn’t bad:
While many of our citizens prosper, others doubt the promise, even the justice, of our own country. The ambitions of some Americans are limited by failing schools and hidden prejudice and the circumstances of their birth. And sometimes our differences run so deep, it seems we share a continent, but not a country.
That line about not sharing a country is about the only time Bush even halfway alludes to the warring throng before him. After he finishes, Jack and I will trudge to the Lincoln Memorial to read the Second Inaugural Address carved into the wall. Bush thinks he’s got problems? In his speech of March 4, 1865, Lincoln asked his countrymen “to bind up the nation’s wounds.” He recapped the still raging Civil War in point-blank terms, as if to say, “Don’t think I haven’t noticed how much we loathe each other.” The speech’s bravery derives from its very honesty. I think it’s a mistake that Bush doesn’t similarly come clean. How many furious citizens might have given him the benefit of the doubt if he just said that he sees us, if he just buttered us up a little, pronouncing that he knows he didn’t get our votes but he will try to earn our trust? Well, Kevin wouldn’t have bought it, but the rest of us suckers might have cut the new president some slack for a day or two.
P ART T WO Nerds v. Jocks
On inauguration day, when Jack and I were walking down the Mall toward the Lincoln Memorial, past all the giggling Republican faces, it felt like being stuck inside the cover of that old Frank Sinatra album No One Cares. It’s the one where there’s a party going on and all the partygoers are smiling and dressed up and dancing, but Sinatra sits all alone at the bar, sighing into his whiskey glass. He has his coat on and he looks like he’s remembering better times.
I was once a Washington intern, back when being a Washington intern was a goody-goody, model-citizen thing for a young lady to do. It was during the Clinton administration’s bubbly first year. I moved into my new Adams-Morgan apartment the night before Yitzhak Rabin shook Yasir Arafat’s hand for the first time on the White House lawn. I thought I could feel the world being saved a few Metro stops away. Looking at all the gleeful partisans on Bush’s inauguration day took me back, that feeling of, Washington is ours! Oh, how my friends and I once cooed with excitement in the fall of ’93 when we were seated at brunch a couple of tables over from George Stephanopoulos. All the other nubile New Democrats were smitten with George, though I myself had a little crush on the sad-eyed economic adviser Robert Rubin.
I had looked forward to Gore’s Washington. With Gore running the country, it would be different. I would feel even more at home. Clinton had appealed to the rock ’n’ roller in me, the part of me that went to Graceland and cried when Kurt Cobain died and thinks about James Brown’s hair. But Gore appeals to the real me, the one who can still sing a song from college German class about which prepositions to use with the accusative case— “Durch, für, gegen, ohne, um: Akkusativ.”
Gore’s pencil neck tugs at my nerdy soul. I think the most lovable thing he has ever said can be found in a sentence in his 1992 book Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. On page 67, he asks, “What happened to the climate in Yucatán around 950?” Something
This part of Bush’s speech isn’t bad:
While many of our citizens prosper, others doubt the promise, even the justice, of our own country. The ambitions of some Americans are limited by failing schools and hidden prejudice and the circumstances of their birth. And sometimes our differences run so deep, it seems we share a continent, but not a country.
That line about not sharing a country is about the only time Bush even halfway alludes to the warring throng before him. After he finishes, Jack and I will trudge to the Lincoln Memorial to read the Second Inaugural Address carved into the wall. Bush thinks he’s got problems? In his speech of March 4, 1865, Lincoln asked his countrymen “to bind up the nation’s wounds.” He recapped the still raging Civil War in point-blank terms, as if to say, “Don’t think I haven’t noticed how much we loathe each other.” The speech’s bravery derives from its very honesty. I think it’s a mistake that Bush doesn’t similarly come clean. How many furious citizens might have given him the benefit of the doubt if he just said that he sees us, if he just buttered us up a little, pronouncing that he knows he didn’t get our votes but he will try to earn our trust? Well, Kevin wouldn’t have bought it, but the rest of us suckers might have cut the new president some slack for a day or two.
P ART T WO Nerds v. Jocks
On inauguration day, when Jack and I were walking down the Mall toward the Lincoln Memorial, past all the giggling Republican faces, it felt like being stuck inside the cover of that old Frank Sinatra album No One Cares. It’s the one where there’s a party going on and all the partygoers are smiling and dressed up and dancing, but Sinatra sits all alone at the bar, sighing into his whiskey glass. He has his coat on and he looks like he’s remembering better times.
I was once a Washington intern, back when being a Washington intern was a goody-goody, model-citizen thing for a young lady to do. It was during the Clinton administration’s bubbly first year. I moved into my new Adams-Morgan apartment the night before Yitzhak Rabin shook Yasir Arafat’s hand for the first time on the White House lawn. I thought I could feel the world being saved a few Metro stops away. Looking at all the gleeful partisans on Bush’s inauguration day took me back, that feeling of, Washington is ours! Oh, how my friends and I once cooed with excitement in the fall of ’93 when we were seated at brunch a couple of tables over from George Stephanopoulos. All the other nubile New Democrats were smitten with George, though I myself had a little crush on the sad-eyed economic adviser Robert Rubin.
I had looked forward to Gore’s Washington. With Gore running the country, it would be different. I would feel even more at home. Clinton had appealed to the rock ’n’ roller in me, the part of me that went to Graceland and cried when Kurt Cobain died and thinks about James Brown’s hair. But Gore appeals to the real me, the one who can still sing a song from college German class about which prepositions to use with the accusative case— “Durch, für, gegen, ohne, um: Akkusativ.”
Gore’s pencil neck tugs at my nerdy soul. I think the most lovable thing he has ever said can be found in a sentence in his 1992 book Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. On page 67, he asks, “What happened to the climate in Yucatán around 950?” Something
Similar Books
