The 44th

Goodbye, Bush - Hello Obama! Today, January 20th, Barack Obama was sworn in as our 44th President. I will admit that I was Hillary supporter and sad to see her lose. But since she did I am glad that it is Barack instead.

On my lunch I got to watch the Biden and Obama be sworn in and hear the inauguration speech. I missed the motorcade and walk but I guess that's ok. Watching the inauguration in my office building's cafeteria was surprising. There were lots of people watching, many more than usually eat lunch at that time. During the ceremony the cafeteria was almost silent. Several times the people around me applauded.

Hearing the applause, seeing the shots of people around the country gathered together to watch the inauguration and watching the huge crowd on the Mall in D.C. really gave me a feeling of optimism. Obama has a lot of good things to say and ambitious plans. He inspires hope and a belief that not only can we do better but we will do better. Some people think he promises too much, too quickly. I don't see how it's possible to hope and strive for "too much." People are not perfect. Plans will fail, decisions will be bad and mistakes will be made. But that does not mean we cannot try to do better. Even if we only accomplish a quarter of his plans our world will be a much better place. And we will be much better people, just for trying.