Time to seize the moment

Columns

February 7, 2013

Time to seize the moment

By Donna Brazile, Syndicated columnist The Picayune Item Picayune Item Thu Feb 07, 2013, 08:00 AM CST

PICAYUNE — All the ideas and rhetoric in President Barack Obama’s second inaugural address emerge from a central theme: “It’s time to seize the moment.” Now is the time to come together as Americans.

Four years ago, in the midst of an economic collapse, two wars and so much uncertainty both here and abroad, Obama reached out for reconciliation only to find his political opponents had no interest in compromise.

Obama recognized the reality that we can no longer debate endlessly over matters hard to resolve, given our polarization. However, we must decide, knowing that many of the decisions will be uncomfortable, painful and require unpleasant compromises. Obama also recognizes the paradox that compromise — i.e., moderation — is not an abandonment of principle, but an affirmation of it. As Thomas Jefferson said in his first inaugural: “Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.”

In order to move forward, the president asserted, “we the people” must come “together.” (Not coincidentally, the phrase “we the people” occurred five times; “together,” seven times.)

Our common identity, he said, quoting the most famous passage of the Declaration of Independence, is rooted in equality.

But allegiance to an idea is not enough. We must act on what can be done together, like raising the debt ceiling, which is the common good.

Obama also said, “History tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing.” Our actions, however, must not be tinged with arrogance. There must be humility and recognition that those elected to office are above all, servants of “we, the people.”

Obama was also specific, especially on the topic of freedom and equality for all Americans — in women’s pay, in the right to vote without delays of hours, for providing our immigrants a path to citizenship and an opportunity to contribute their talents and hard work to “we, the people.” He talked about expanding economic opportunities so the working and middle class can advance as well as the wealthy.

He talked about equality before the law — that gays and lesbian Americans can share no less than other citizens in human rights. He talked about generational equality — that reducing the debt not unduly burden any one generation.

And he emphasized that “our founding creed” is something of a spiritual mandate: “While freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by his people here on earth.”

Also, as he has done so often during his presidency, Obama emphasized the balance between our social responsibility to the elderly, the sick, the children, and the victims of sudden disasters, and the American maxims of individual responsibility and personal initiative.

On the one hand, “The commitments we make to each other through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security ... do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.” On the other, “we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. ... Our celebration of initiative and enterprise, our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, there are constants in our character.”

He noted the paradox of America, that together we build our roads, our economy, our defense, and yet ... America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work.”

And then he returned to his theme: “My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it — so long as we seize it together.”

The motifs of the speech — we must act together, we must enact our founding creed of equality — has bipartisan support, as the polls indicate. Fifty-three percent of the public supports equal rights for gays, including marriage; 57 percent approves of opening the doors to citizenship for our immigrants, including the undocumented; 80 percent believes climate change is here and is a serious problem; and 67 percent favors the wealthy getting fewer tax breaks before programs for the middle class are cut.

In other words, the president’s principles are America’s principles. We the people’s principles. Yes, there will be and should be debate. Yet debate should not be an impediment to progress, but an impetus to it: “Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time — but it does require us to act in our time.

“For now decisions are upon us, and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate. We must act — we must act knowing that our work will be imperfect. We must act, knowing that today’s victories will be only partial.”

In that vision, there is both strength and humility. In those words, there is leadership. But the leadership must not solely come from the top. It must be provided from us all.

In this, we can all come together. President Obama reminded us that once again, hope can be realized again.

(Donna Brazile is a senior Democratic strategist, a political commentator and contributor to CNN and ABC News.)

Text Only

Columns

Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist

I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.”

March 29, 2013
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist

Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.

March 29, 2013
VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist

While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008.

March 27, 2013
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists

When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”

March 27, 2013
Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing.

March 23, 2013
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered.

March 23, 2013
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun

The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral.

March 22, 2013
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist

No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.

March 22, 2013
Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist

While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.

March 20, 2013
Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist

Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley.

March 20, 2013
More Columns Headlines

Columns

Search Results

Time to seize the moment

Site Map

Contact Us