'The Long, Rugged Path'

Throughout his two-year campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama leaned heavily on wide visions of hope, on creating the kind of story and image upon which voters from many backgrounds could attach their own personal specifics, their own ideas about the meaning of change. But today, as he stood over the millions on the Mall, President Obama delivered a spirited but relatively somber message to those who see his administration as a movement. This was my favorite passage:

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted — for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

That 'rugged path' is right ahead; indeed we seem to be on it. The President's speech neither soared nor promised - in fact, it left the campaign behind.

Sure, some people still want to party and buy their Obama souvenirs and keep the entertaining rallies going. Fine. But President Obama served notice - well-written, well-delivered notice, I thought - that he has moved on. That those of us who work hard in relative obscurity should continue to do so, that the traditional American path of self-improvement while watching out for the guy next to you, was still open - but also that the party is over.

Today's address was a speech for our times: down times, difficult days, times when the only choice is between hard work and awful, rotting, dispiriting decline. The dreary media rooting section wanted dramatic rhetoric, another new frontier. But what we saw was fear itself: not irrational panic, but the tough-minded recognition that this country should fear what may come next - and face it squarely. You can't print it on a CNN t-shirt or some NBC News commemorative pin, but this rang true: "Everywhere we look," said President Obama. "There is work to be done."