Mr. Smith went to Washington yesterday

Mr. Smith went to Washington yesterday, with Barack Obama playing the role of Jefferson Smith from the feel-good movie starring Jimmy Stewart ^[1] about an unlikely United States Senator who leads his countrymen, women and children to their common senses and their common purpose. To say that I shed a tear or two would diminish the national deluge that greeted President Obama’s oath of office. With a single, “So help me God,” this unlikely candidate, and even unlikelier winner, became our 44th president.

If it seemed like a movie, it was. It was a national spectacle filled with famous and anonymous faces of Americans who realized that a page in human history has been turned, millions of whom have been dreaming and praying for just such a day. America, at long last, has proved to itself and the world that it means what it says because it believes its own founding myth. That all men are created equal and that we the people control our own destiny.

Jimmy Stewart is the perfect role model for Barack Obama in the role of the people’s president. He even started his presidency with a Jimmy Stewart stammer because of the crossed signals during Supreme Court Chief Justice John Robert’s recitation of the Constitutionally mandated Presidential oath of office. At the same time the cast of characters surrounding the event looked like every hero and villain from Bedford Falls in Frank Capra’s other Jimmy Stewart classic, It’s a Wonderful Life ^[2]. Tell me that outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney didn’t look like he was doing a Lionel Barrymore impersonation as the evil miser Mr. Potter when he rolled onto stage in his wheelchair and cane.

It was great theater and it was a great day for America and for the world. The only thing missing was Zuzu’s petals and the sound of a bell ringing. For somewhere in heaven an angel certainly earned his wings for showing us all that a single life can indeed change the world. Oh happy day.