So, What Happens Now?

Yesterday was the day that the mantle of leadership was passed from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. One became former President Bush and the other officially became President Barack Obama.

The handoff went well. Numerous reports came from the White House that the transition from Ronald Reagan to George H. W. Bush was surprisingly bad because the Reagans treated the Bushes in a rather shabby fashion and were remarkably graceless in the transition.

The Bushes, however, were remarkably gracious to the Clintons and were as helpful as they could be. The transition from Clinton to Bush was marred by vandalism and the fact that no one could get Bill Clinton to leave town.

This transition, however, went very well. The Bushes were very gracious and the Obamas were gracious in return. It was hard not to be proud of the four of them standing together with great dignity and respect for one another, and, above all, respect for the process.

There were, and will be petulant children.

The early signs of petulance came from people booing President Bush. This was disgraceful. This is a day of honoring the country and honoring the people who serve. In my mind, any person who serves as our President (even runs for the office) ought to be regarded as a patriot of the highest order. They are willing to put themselves on the line, personally, to serve their country. They are willing to be mocked by the comedians, skewered by the press, and unloved by half the country during the best of times. They are also, always at risk of an assassin’s bullet. They were well protected by the Secret Service, but a person willing to die can be an incredibly dangerous to even a well protected person. Shame on the people who booed.

And, as one might expect, President Obama was skewered all afternoon on talk radio. He is going to ruin the country, he is going to make us less safe, he is going to tear down the moral fabric of the nation, he will remove all of our rights, and will allow scurvy to devastate the United State Navy. One would presume, from listening to these folks, that things were great until Obama came along and everything is going to go to hell in a handbasket now. In short, lots of whining took place.

Meanwhile, large crowds gathered and people huddled around their televisions in search of hope, hoping and praying that the man who was elected to be the President of the United States does well. Lord knows, we need him to do well. We lived in a very troubled time with major issues facing the new President. It strikes me that we ought to get passed booing and whining and search for answers wherever they can be found.

So what happens now, is this. The time has come to try and solve problems. The time has come for people to quit booing, quit whining, quit worrying about only themselves and to grow up and recognize that solutions need to be found rather than just wallowing around in the middle of nowhere.

President Obama quoted from 1st Corinthians, chapter 13 which is the well known passage written by St. Paul about love. Here is what Paul wrote in the midst of that chapter:

For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

St. Paul is making two observations. The first is that reality and the world around us is much vaster and more complex than we often realize. We can only know partial truths about anything. We see in a mirror dimly. The philosopher Plato wrote about seeing shadows on the wall of a cave in terms of human knowledge. We know some things, but only some things. Truth is far greater than we can fathom.

Paul’s second observation is that there is an analogy in this in our lives as human beings. When we are children we perceive things one way; and when we become adults our perceptions change. We put away childish things; we leave childish ways behind us. Obama’s point was simple. We need to stop acting, stop behaving in childish ways, and learn to become adults in our national discourse. Children may have their ideals, but it takes adults to solve problems. It is time, as a nation, to get over our childish temper tantrums and grow up.

Over the last several months our outgoing President and incoming President both behaved like adults. It was almost startling; sight rarely seen in our nation’s capital. Adults. Who’d have thunk it.

The wing nuts will not be happy. The left will clamor that enough is not being done. The right will clamor that the wrong things are being done. The wing nuts will boo and whine. Let them. Let’s hope and pray that as a nation, we have adults in charge, in both parties, who will look to solve the problems facing us instead of holding their breath until they turn blue.