Galt Global Review

The inauguration of President Obama, as the 44th President of the United States, marks a powerful, pivotal moment in American history. Yesterday, the world watched and celebrated in record-breaking turnouts as Washington ushered in what many are calling a “new era of change.”

In his first inauguration speech, President Obama faced tremendous pressure to strike the right balance between hope, vision and honest appraisal of our present challenges.

“What Americans want in an inaugural address is a sense of vision and reaffirmation of what's best in their country,” writes Kenneth T. Walsh in a special report for U.S News. “The most memorable of such speeches also capture and encourage the zeitgeist of their times.”

If Obama’s speech sets the tone for our times, then it appears we are in the “era of responsibility,” re-building through hard work what has been, Obama stated: a “collective failure to make hard choices.”

Remarking that the “time has come to set aside childish things,” President Obama called upon a return to the values of hard work, honesty, courage, temperance and restraint, asserting that “greatness is never a given, it must be earned.” These values, he said, have been the “quiet force of progress.”

“Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less,” he said. “It has not been the path for the faint-hearted.”

Speaking about the economy, Obama said: “Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions – that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves off up, dust ourselves off, and begin the work…let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter.”

Undoubtedly, it was a speech that stirred a nation. The question remains: Now what? What needs to be done for us that we cannot, or aught to do for ourselves?

Interesting Fact:
The Harvard Business Review called it “Obama’s Speech Times Five.”
On March 4, 1841, President William Henry Harrison gave the longest inaugural address in American history. The 68-year-old former general spoke for 105 minutes during a snowstorm, wearing neither an overcoat nor gloves. A month later, he died of pneumonia. (proving that public speaking can be a killer)

SOURCE: Bartleby.com