New president presides over a landscape of hope

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama staged his arrival in Washington to evoke Abraham Lincoln's, but the historical echo is faint. Lincoln's famous train ride to his 1861 inauguration traversed a landscape of bitterness and strife. He had to speed through Baltimore "like a thief in the night" for fear of riots and possible assassination. Obama, by contrast, was met by tens of thousands of Baltimoreans who braved subfreezing temperatures to cheer the new president. As Obama made his way to the capital, he crossed a landscape of hope.

Rarely has a new presidency been greeted with such a consensus of goodwill — and rarely has a new president so needed it.

The importance of Obama's mind-blowing historical breakthrough can hardly be overstated. Slavery vexed the Founding Fathers; if not for Lincoln's iron determination, it would have ripped the nation apart. For nearly a century after African-Americans were freed from bondage, American society still relegated us to a corner reserved for second-class citizens.

Having a black man as president does not magically eliminate racial disparities in income or wealth; it does not fix inner-city schools, repair crumbling neighborhoods or heal dysfunctional families. Psychologically, though, it changes everything.

Our mental furniture is being rearranged. The advent of Obama's presidency brings the African-American experience to center stage, but does so in a way that allows society to congratulate itself on having come so far. The implications for black Americans are even more profound, because seeing Obama in the White House obliterates any logic behind self-imposed limits on imagination and ambition.

These are huge impacts — which makes it ironic that, in the end, race is likely to be secondary in defining Obama's place in history.

Since Obama's election, I've heard more than one friend joke sardonically that the nation has said sure, a black man can run the country, go right ahead and take your turn — now that the economy is in the tubes, the financial system is a wreck, we're mired in two wars, global warming is parboiling the planet, the government has been forced to spend a trillion dollars or more just to stave off utter ruin and there's precious little money left to finance desperately needed reforms in health care, education, energy, infrastructure ...