Do Something

Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President today. I watched his inaugural address in the skyway in downtown St. Paul, next to the convenience store where I buy my not-great-but-not-awful coffee every morning.

I was on my way back from Subway, where I bought a 6-inch turkey on honey oat, a splurge for me these days as I can't really justify the $3.44 when I have perfectly good turkey and bread at home. I look forward to the day when Subway is no longer a "treat" or something I have to feel guilty for.

There was a large crowd gathered around the tube, which kept sputtering at inopportune moments.

I thought the President's speech was well done, inspiring, thoughtfully somber given the times. But in my gut, lovely speeches aside, when the people around me clapped politely at his invocations of freedom and change and history and patriotism, the hopeful realist in me merely whispered, "do something."

Do something. Do something to show me, to prove to me, your doubtful constituent, that you are what you are promising to be. I want to believe you when you throw around ideas regarding investing in transmission, powering the country with the ingenuity of alternative energy, building our schools in ways that will no longer embarass us internationally, declaring to our enemies that we will not be defeated. You sound very sure of yourself and very sure of your position in history. And I hope, no, I pray, that you are correct.

I am not so ignorant as to believe that your "change" is somehow immediate, or that a politician in Washington can impact my life more than my own sweat. I will work hard to make my life better, regardless of whether or not my President makes that easier for me. And I believe the vast majority of Americans are aware of that same truth. We are not prosperous because our government made us so. We are prosperous because we work. Hard.

I am a Doubting Thomas these days politically. I do not trust my new president to provide everything he has promised, how could he? I am well aware of the machine that gets men (ahem) elected to the Presidency and I know compromises were made to accomplish a larger goal. But I want proof of sincerity now. I want action that speaks to the million promises he made, broke, remade, along his path to the White House. I want you, Mr. President, to do something.

And I, and everybody else, will expect that something to begin tomorrow.