What Peggy Noonan Saw at the Inaugural

One more observation about the inaugural and then it's time to move on. Here's Peggy Noonan's take:

It was like "The Canterbury Tales."

That's what it was like last Saturday, in LaGuardia Airport, on the shuttle to Washington packed full of people going to the inauguration of President Obama. A handsome, affluent black woman in first class—fur hat, chic silver jewelry—laughed on a cell phone as a businessman—tall, black, middle aged—hurried down the aisle in black overcoat and Burberry scarf. A young man in slouchy jeans and dark watchman's cap, iPod buds in place, nodded, in coach, to the tune in his head. Two young white men in beige cowboy hats and grey fleece jackets came on board. Where you from? "Montana!" they said in unison. A boy, 10 or so, learning-impaired, sat with his grandmother. Where you from? I asked him. Shyly: "Detroit. Kentucky." Middle-aged and older black women in their proud, broad-brimmed hats sat primly, purses clutched on laps. A young black family all in jumpsuits posed for pictures. An air of great sweetness. The tender way people laugh too loud when they're a little nervous, and excited, and know they're part of something and it's big.

But here's a point she makes that I hadn't thought of:

Every time a nation does something big, the members of that nation who are 4 feet tall—the children who are 10 and 12—are looking up and absorbing. Forty years ago, in 1968, that grim and even-grimmer-in-retrospect year of war protests, race riots, taunts and assassinations, our 4-foot-tall citizens would have been justified in thinking that America is a scary place marked by considerable unhappiness and injustice. But the past week they could look up and see either harmony and happiness or peaceful acceptance and resolve. Washington was a town full of families and full of kids this week, and they must have picked up this: Anything is possible in America. We decide to go to the moon and soon it's "Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed." We decide to cure polio and soon it's a nation of Wilma Rudolphs, running. We struggle over civil rights and then the young black man raises his hand and says "I, Barack Hussein Obama . . ." We so rock. That's what 4-foot-tall Americans must have learned this week. A generation that will come to adulthood in 2020 and 2030 and has in their heads this sense of optimism and America-love will likely be stronger for it. It augurs well.

She's right of course. No matter my politics, or that of any other adults', it's our children who are watching all of this, all of us. Rachel likes Obama and staunch Republican Emily declared she's beginning to like him, too; they can't help be affected by this unfolding history.

Despite my policy disagreements, there's still much good to be had from Obama as our President.