Recently campus has been overflowing with a sort of post-inaugural afterglow inspired by the consummation of a two-year relationship with Barack Obama. But let me tell you something. It wasn't exactly like it looked on television.
Early that Tuesday morning, a brave group piled into my Subaru. We drove north through a snow storm, parked outside of D.C. just before dawn and packed ourselves like sardines into the metro. An hour later we poured out onto the National Mall where we settled in to wait out the hours with 2 million of our closest friends. It was thrilling, emotional and every bit as exciting as it looked on television. But you know what? It was also really cold.
I'm not sure what I expected-I think it involved a lot of strangers embracing, swept up in the moment-but it wasn't that. It wasn't blinding ecstasy or unbridled jubilee. It was relief, and it was exhaustion.
Chants of "Yes We Can" fizzled out like dud firecrackers and the classic Oh-Bah-Mah refrain seemed to tip-toe across that fine line between inspirational and cultish. We were cold and tired, but in the end, I'm not sure if that is why we were so fatigued. I think it was the circumstance.
It's been a confusing, damaging eight years. Becoming an adult during this Bush administration has been frustrating often to the point of nihilism. And in its last moments we wrapped ourselves together, as much for warmth as for camaraderie, but as excited as we tried to be, we were worn out.
It's become a cliché to say that Obama takes office at one of the most critical moments in American history. But we felt it that day. The economic situation has stolen the spotlight away from nearly everything else. Every day economists are coming to realize what they should have known months ago, that it seems we are not in the midst of an economic recession but rather a systemic failure that can only be stopped if we act immediately and intelligently.
This past weekend, the global luminaries of politics, economics and business met in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. Traditionally a rare blend of business and pleasure, the WEF involves lectures and panel discussions during the day and celebrity, supermodel-studded galas at night. As one might imagine, the event was rather somber this year. Claudia Schiffer (Davos 2007, apparently) opted to skip out, probably looking for a party that wasn't themed "Shaping the Post-Crisis World." But her absence wasn't the only notable downer.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch opened the proceedings on Wednesday with some very sobering comments. Say what you will about Murdoch, when the man publicly announces that "the crisis is getting worse," pay attention.
I know it seems as though at any given moment in recent history, there have been at least 10 to 15 wild-eyed economists screaming Armageddon on the street corners. And I know that about once a business cycle, they are almost right. But this time, it seems that they just may be.
It is painfully clear that these next few weeks are mission-critical, though the same could have been said for the past year and half. The new stimulus package has some good ideas along with some tremendously bad ones, but it does seem to serve as a nice gesture of confidence. The new Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner plans to unveil something exciting next week, presumably a revamped Troubled Asset Relief Program, and has been in talks with the International Monetary Fund and China about re-valuing its currency, which could provide some real stimulus for the American economy by making our exports more competitive.
In any case, we won't begin to see any positive effects from these policy moves for a long time, if ever. We won't even really know if it's too late until it's too late. As the Cato Institute recently pointed out-with the help of five Duke economists-there is no educated consensus on this crisis or its solutions. One point we can all agree on, however, is that we've only just begun to realize the extent of the damage.
My friends and I left the National Mall when the inaugural ceremony ended at 12:30 p.m., but we didn't make it out of the city until about 7 p.m. The exodus was a logistical nightmare. Masses streamed off of the Mall after Obama's address and immediately clogged public transit. Police and city officials were clueless, and crowds wandered from point to point trying to find an open metro stop or a road that wasn't barricaded. Still cold, even more exhausted, but, for the moment, satisfied, we drove home through the dark.
2009 might be a rough year for the country. We may be cold and tired now, but we need to be prepared.
Andrew Kindman is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Monday.
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