COMMENTARY

A new day has dawned, or has it?  That's the question I'm pondering two days after the inauguration of President Barack Obama.  The sight of more than one million people (Mayor Fenty says it was closer to two million.) on the National Mall was nothing less than incredible.  I've spend more than a decade here in D.C., and I've never seen anything like it.  Certainly, I've never heard of an event this large in Washington where there was not a single arrest, and there were none on Inauguration Day!  In that sense, perhaps a new day has dawned, which begs the next question how long will it last?  What struck me most about the day was the way in which people from all walks of life, all ages, races and backgrounds stood together in the frigid cold to witness Mr. Obama officially take office.  I wondered why we can't find common ground more often.  What world we'd live in if we could!  Contrary to all the popular stereotypes, we're not all that different from each other.

Call me a skeptic or a cynic, but I give this spirit of goodwill a month or two, maybe less.  I'd love to be wrong and I may be, but in the words of the recently arrested Charles Barkley, I doubt it.  Human nature is entirely predictable, and eventually President Obama will do something, try something or attempt to do or try something that his political opponents will see as the perfect opportunity for them to rise up, call attention to themselves and most importantly, score themselves political points that shine the spotlight on them.  That's the way politics works.  It's absolutely Machiavellian.  And for all the talk about how the mainstream news media was supposedly nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Obama campaign in the run-up to the election, no one cut Robert Gibbs any slack during his first briefing as White House Press Secretary today.  Welcome to Washington, Mr. Gibbs!  It won't get any better than what you saw today.  That's why I'm very comfortable in my assessment that the era of good feelings in all quarters will be short-lived.

Yes, Mr. Obama says he's a different kind of politician who will do things differently, and it appears he is trying.  I have been incredibly amused by those who've been upset that he's actually tried to do some of the things he promised on the campaign trail.  Inviting Rick Warren to deliver the invocation is one example.  Candidate Obama said that if elected, he'd reach out to those who hold views opposite of his and try to find common ground.  In choosing Mr. Warren, President Obama did just that.  I guess folks were shocked because some politicians never make the effort to follow through on what they promise.  The firestorm over this decision has died down for the most part, but there will be others.  It's only a matter of time.  In fact, Mr. Obama had to play hardball with some of his fellow Democrats over the TARP money last week before he was sworn in Tuesday.  Just wait until Republicans find their footing and their voice.  It'll be game on.  The one thing working in Mr. Obama's favor is that it may take the GOP a little while to find its way out of the 2008 post-election wilderness.  Republicans have to decide who they are and what kind of party they want to be before they can effectively be the loyal opposition.  The bottom line is that even if Mr. Obama turns out to be the different kind of politician he says he is, Washington is an old dog that has a hard time learning new tricks, and the politicians who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo won't release their grip easily even if they are caught up in the euphoria of this moment.