Bowing to the right on Inauguration Day

The inauguration speech delivered by President Barack Obama Tuesday has been the object of near-delirious praise from the mass media and the editorial pages of the major US dailies. Even those forced to acknowledge that the 18-minute address was flat in its delivery, banal in much of its content and lacking any oratory that will be long remembered insist that it mattered little what Obama actually said. The important thing was his very presence on the steps of the Capitol—and that of the massive crowd on the Washington Mall—symbolizing “change.”

Eschewing genuine analysis and dedicating its coverage instead to self-delusion and deluding others, the media almost universally fails to grasp the immense contradiction between the sentiments that brought nearly two million people to Washington for the event and the politics that underlay what Obama actually said.

Those standing in the cold came to celebrate the exit from the political stage of a hated president, George W. Bush, and what many hoped would be the beginning of fundamental change. The speech itself, however, was crafted in large measure to appease the Republican right and signal continuity with its essential policies.

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