Good Morning, Mr President. It's a New Day

Yesterday was as much a watershed moment for this country as any in our history. I thought President Obama's speech struck the right tone. It was inspiring yet somber. It offered a great balance of vision, pragmatism, and idealism. Most importantly, his speech was a clarion call. He's calling us all to return to a participatory government: participatory not just in the sense of choosing our leaders, but in actually following them to get the work of the nation done:

We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. 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 up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

Similarly:

What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

Obama portrayed his response to the moment at hand as ideology-free: 

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity to courage. 

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them--that the stale 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--whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.

Yes, we can. We are in for some interesting times, and I can't help but smile.

The full speech can be read here and watched here. An awesome satellite image of the Washington Mall during the inauguration can be seen here.