Tomorrow

I cannot believe that tomorrow at noon eastern, this official Presidential picture will become a reality. Barack Hussein Obama will become the 44th President of the United States of America. I feel so fortunate to be able to witness and be a part of this turning point in our nations history.

I know there are people who see this event through different eyes. They are fearful, suspicious, and ideologically opposed to Obama's spoken vision of America. For those people this inaugural celebration is a tempered affair. But to those brother and sister citizen's I hope to encourage you with words from Peggy Noonan, editorial writer from the Wall Street Journal:

But a long-oppressed people have raised up a president. It is moving and beautiful and speaks to the unending magic and sense of justice of our country. The other day the journalist John O'Sullivan noted that 150 years after slavery, a black man stands in the place of Lincoln in the inaugural stands, and this country has proved again that anything is possible, that if we can do this we can do anything. That is a good thing to remember at a difficult time.

What is required for full enjoyment of an inauguration, from opening prayers to speeches to marching bands is, in the great 19th-century phrase, the willing suspension of disbelief. If you don't put your skepticism aside, you will not fully absorb and experience the drama. You must allow it to be real for you...

To believe, suspend disbelief. We have been through this before, the flags and fine speeches, the brass donkey paperweight, the glass elephant, the rise and fall of administrations, the coming and going of figures great and small. It's good to put that aside for a few days, to remove yourself from politics, partisanship and faction, to suspend your disbelief, to be grateful that the signs and symbols endure, as does the republic, and raise a toast: "To the president of the United States."