TONY COX, Host:
President Barack Obama called on Americans today to join him in facing the nation's challenges. The 44th president promised bold and swift action to revive the struggling economy, and he pledged to restore America's standing in the world. Joining me now is Karen Grigsby Bates, correspondent for NPR's National Desk. Karen and I watched the speech together. Hey, Karen.
KAREN GRIGSBY BATES: Hi, Tony.
COX: You know, look, it's been an hour or more since we finished watching it. What sticks with you?
BATES: A couple of things. One thing was that this was a speech that, you know, in past inaugural speeches, every couple of seconds, you get a lot of clapping that interrupt the speech. People really listened to this speech. When you look at the camera shots that were panning the Mall and people everywhere seemed to be paying particular attention to now-President Obama's words, and they were taking it very seriously. And it wasn't a feel-good speech. He gave this whole catalog of challenges that the nation was going to have to face, from economic to foreign relations to health care to education. He just sort of threw it all out there.
COX: As a matter of fact, we're going to play a clip that makes the point that you are just making. This is an excerpt from President Obama's speech earlier today acknowledging that the country faces many challenges.
(Soundbite of President Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration speech)
President BARACK OBAMA: What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale of political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small but whether it works.
COX: I know, Karen, that you thought, for example, that this was a great speech, you said so.
BATES: I did. I thought it ranked right up there. There were snatches of lots of previous great inaugural speeches. They were definitely echoes of John Fitzgerald Kennedy's 1961 inaugural speech.
COX: Absolutely.
BATES: And of Martin Luther King's March on Washington address. And there were - and I think this was intentional, a lot of Lincolnesque touches to this. And I think the way people listened to it was almost Lincolnesque. You know, when Lincoln did the Gettysburg Address, nobody clapped afterwards, and he thought it was a failure. And one of his aides explained to him, Mr. President, it was like a prayer. You don't clap after a prayer.
COX: Very interesting. And you know, we got advanced copies of the speech, and as I went through it, marking it up, you're absolutely right. There are several places where you can see references that remind you of MLK or of Kennedy and other past presidents - Lincoln, even Roosevelt.
I want to ask you about one of the expected controversies, which may or may not have turned out to be that, and that is the appearance of Reverend Rick Warren to give the invocation. Anything surprise you about Rick Warren's message?
BATES: It was more temperate than I thought it was maybe going to be. You know, there was a lot of speculation ahead of time because he feels very strongly about things like single sex - same-sex marriage. He thinks that that's the wrong thing. He thinks - he's a warrior against abortion. And he's been very upfront about staking that claim, which has worked very well for his evangelical base, but it's also been very divisive when it's tried to go beyond that base. So some of the speculation was he was going to bring those things into the speech. I didn't hear them, although I missed the first minute of his speech. So if he did it very quickly, then he did it before I noticed.
The other thing that happened was there was some speculation about how he was going to close his address. The thought was, if you mention God, if you mention a higher authority, many people around the world have their version of God that they worship. They're fine with that. Mention Jesus, and you exclude huge numbers of the listeners who were hearing that, and he did, indeed, stay true to his evangelical roots and mentioned Jesus as his God and savior. So some people did find that off-putting.
COX: Let me ask you stick around because we're going to bring in a couple of other voices to our conversation and continue it. Joining us now is Mary Frances Berry, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and the former chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and Robert Traynham, the D.C. bureau chief for the Comcast Network, CN8. Robert and Mary, nice to have you back.
Dr. MARY FRANCES BERRY (History, University of Pennsylvania):Hey, Tony.
Mr. ROBERT TRAYNHAM (Bureau Chief, Comcast Network, CN8): Hey, Tony, Happy Inauguration Day.
COX: Thanks. Same to you. Mary, let me begin with you because you must be tired. When we talked to you yesterday, you were in Ohio heading back to D.C. Did you get back in time to see it, and what was your reaction to being there?
Dr. BERRY: I got back in time to not only do some media last night but to observe the whole thing and to be out with the people and seeing what was going on and how they were feeling. Yes, indeed, and so it's a very high-spirited day, a little bit dimmed by the illness of Senator Kennedy with the seizure that he had during the inauguration proceedings, but a great day.
COX: Robert, was there something that stood out for you, positively or otherwise, about A, the ceremony, and B, about President Obama's speech?
Mr. TRAYNHAM: I would say overall, Tony, you know, we stood on the footsteps of democracy's front porch, which is obviously the U.S. Capitol. And hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions - well, time will only tell, we'll see exactly how many people were there - stood there in silence and they listened to their new president unify the country. And you know, regardless of whether you're Republican or Democrat, liberal versus conservative, it was very moving to me to look around and see so many people listening intensively to the new president and saying, you know what? I wish him well. You know, this is the beauty of our country is that, you know, for two years we fought and we scraped and we talked about being red versus blue and Republican versus Democrat, but today we're all Americans, and that was very special.
COX: Well you know, in the past, President Obama has been reluctant to directly address his place as the first African-American president, but today - well, here's what he said in his speech.
(Soundbite of President Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration speech)
President BARACK OBAMA: This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent Mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.
COX: That was a telling passage, wasn't it, Mary?
Dr. BERRY: Well, I think so. I think it was an oblique reference to his racial origins, but one doesn't expect more than that. His whole campaign has been about downplaying the race question, and nobody should have expected him to play it up today. But that was a vague reference to his racial origins, and he got it in. As a matter of fact, the only thing that I saw that he did not include - he even talked in one phrase about not only people of different religions but people who are not religious. I thought, in light of the Rick Warren controversy, he might at least at some point mention the word "gay," you know, in the litany of people who live in America in order to say that, but I didn't see that.
COX: I noticed that, as well. Karen, Obama directly addressed some of the nation's problems - the struggling econoomy, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - do you think that he gave the people who did not vote for him the confidence that he can tackle these problems?
BATES: I think he sounded really definite, really purposeful, and in it for the long haul. You know, as Jessie Jackson used to like to say on the campaign trail, this ain't a sprint. This is a marathon. And he's bascially saying, this is not going to be all good times, folks. You know, we're really going to have to roll up our sleeves and work. But we could do it during the Depression. We did it during other stressful times in the nation's history, and we can do it now. We have to stop babying ourselves, and we have to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
COX: There's no way to know so soon, Robert, what the country's reaction to him is going to be based on just a few hours of being in office. But given what you have seen and heard just so far, do you have a sense of how well he will be accepted by the rest of the nation, given what he said and did so far today?
Mr. TRAYNHAM: You're right, Tony. Only time will tell. Look, President Obama has already demonstrated himself to be a moderist. He is a centrist. He has already alienated the liberal left wing of his party by having Rick Warren give the invocation, by talking about the need to continue in Afghanistan, by talking about thea need to perhaps keep the Bush tax cuts in place. So he's already governing from the center, and there's a lot of people out there that's going to be very upset with him, and the reason why is because he's a very gifted politician who had spoke very lofty words during the campaign, and he said A, but now he's going to do B. And so what you saw, at least what I saw during the inauguration, was him lowering the expectation.
The question becomes, Tony, is whether or not his millions of supporters out there will be able to have the patience to be able to say, you know what, I understand that he has to govern now. I understand he has to govern from the center. But most importantly - just as importantly, I should say - is the 2012 elections are right around the corner, and of course, the president and his team are already looking at the election and saying, you know what? In order for us to do any monumental change, we're going to have to wait until 2012 for us to get elected first, and the only way we can do that is to govern from the center.
Dr. BERRY: Well, I thought it was more of the same in terms of the tone and tenor of his speech. I thought it was also very effective to put the burden of change not just on himself and the government but on the people out there so that if things do not change fast enough, part of it is the responsibility of the people. He put that out there.
And I also thought it was interesting. In the litany of values that he's now trying to renew - he talked about hard work and patriotism and all the values - it sort of reminded me of when Bill Clinton used to talk about the people who work hard and play by the rules, the same kind of theme. And the responsibility reminded me of George Bush and all his talk about responsibility. And in fact, Bush One - several presidents have used that theme. It was very, very effective, but more of the same and vintage Obama.
COX: Well, to talk about responsibility, let's close the conversation with this thought because Obama chose Reverend Joseph Lowery to give the closing prayer at today's inaugural ceremony. Now, Lauwry co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 with Martin Luther King. Here is part of how he ended his benediction.
(Soundbite of 2009 presidential inauguration benediction)
Reverend JOSEPH LOWERY: Lord, remember all the saints, who from their neighbors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when a red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right. Let all those who will do justice and love mercy say amen.
COX: Now, Karen, you and I, we smiled when he said that as we were watching him.
BATES: we did, but we have been churched in the black church, and we knew where that was going. You know, it was a really interesting bookend. You know, you have Rick Warren at the beginning opening this ceremony, and then this battle-scarred veteran of the civil rights movement closing it, beginning with this hymn-like stanza of the Negro National Anthem, which was written in 1899, and closing with basically stuff you might jump rope to when you were 10 years old. But you know, he got everything in.
COX: Well, let me get Mary and Robert get in here in the last couple of minutes that we have. Mary, were you surprised to hear him say these things?
Dr. BERRY: Well, I was surprised, but of course, it's very familiar. But I - some other people who were listening who don't know that history and tradition said, you know, is that politically correct to keep talking about the yellow man and the red man and all the rest?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Dr. BERRY: And I had to explain to them that that's part of the tradition.
COX: Robert, what did you think when you heard that?
Mr. TRAYNHAM: Organized shock.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. TRAYNHAM: And the reason why I say that is because as a black man and obviously seeing a black man being inaugurated and seeing a sea of black faces, I was very at home by hearing those words, as someone had mentioned a few moments ago, about just being schooled in a black church. A little shocked, a little taken aback that that was said at an inauguration. But having said that, you know, this was a moment that, frankly speaking, every single day that Barack Obama is president, whether it be to 2012 or to 2016, he will be rewriting history, and I think he will be schooling all of us and reminding all of us about what it means to be a black person in America.
COX: I want to thank all of you for participating, your comments and insight. And I want to just end by telling you something that I read in the Washington Post today in a column of Eugene Robinson, which I thought was very apropos of our description of America with a new black president. Quote, "Our mental furniture is being rearranged," end quote.
Mary Frances Berry, professor of history at the university of Pennsylvania and the former chair of the U.S. Civil Rights COmmision. Robert Traynham, the D.C. bureau chief of the Comcast Network CN8, and Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR correspondant for the National Desk. One and all, thank you very much.
BATES: You're welcome.
Mr. TRAYNHAM: Thank you.
Dr. BERRY: Bye-bye.
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