You have only just arrived in the White House and while I am sure you have more important issues such as conflicts abroad, the economy, and the environment, I hope you are managing to get enough sleep and stay healthy. For obvious reasons, I do not want you to have an off day. I am also a strong believer in “family first” so I extend my best wishes to your family.

I am a conservative and I voted for change. My new home, in this part of the United States has a long history and not all of it is perfect. Even today, I hear the words and emotions of 148 years ago. I do not believe and cannot be proud of what I hear but it is part of our nation’s heritage and the past cannot be changed. I stay positive that these sentiments will not pass on to another generation.

It is important to realize, while there will most assuredly be great challenges ahead; challenges from afar, challenges beyond manipulation and control, perhaps the greatest challenge and the greatest reward will be the establishment of a union of one people.

On election night, you chose Abraham Lincoln; I chose Thomas Jefferson. Our choices were separated by 80 years and yet many of the passages represent the same mind and the same vision.

While I could include the whole of President Jefferson’s inaugural speech, I only capture a small fragment here and hope you have or will find time for the entire piece.

… I ask so much confidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal administration of your affairs. I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others … – Thomas Jefferson

You have set the bar for all Americans. We are not a perfect people and it is my sincere hope that you will demonstrate great leadership and compassion. This is a nation of people who want better and are willing to step up and do better. Just as you acknowledged in your electoral acceptance, we will have false starts. I ask that you not despair and do not dismiss us. We look for leadership and not for pandering. We want, need, and deserve the truth. We are strong individuals and with an honest and companionate President, we will be a strong nation.

On this January day, I am once again excited. I feel the winds of change. As a nation, while the seas are rough and our ship is being tossed, we trust that the planks have been well secured, the sails are lashed, and if we do not panic, our captain will navigate us through the storm to once again relish at the dawn of a better day.

Since the election, I have been reading the inaugural addresses of past presidents. Today I read the relatively short address of Franklin Delano Roosevelt on March 4th, 1933. Here are a few lines

It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

This part of his address should not be taken lightly. The power FDR describes helped a paralyzed nation but it could just as quickly shackled it. We must watch carefully what takes place on Main Street, Wall Street, *and* Pennsylvania Avenue.

Hey again. This started as a letter to a friend of mine who will be headed this way in a few weeks …

I was about to call it a night and a mash of things took place. I was brushing my teeth and thinking; “when he arrives, should I tell him that the evening news is downloaded and watched at 9:30pm, the living room lights go off at 9:45pm, video streaming and computers start to shut off at 10pm, the hallway lights comes at 9:55pm and off by 10:15pm and then things start up automatically again in the morning with the computers waking up at 6am, the lights in the bedroom by 6:20 and in the office at 6:45am so on”. Then there is the fact that the drafty old farmhouse thermostat is set at 62 because much more is like watching money fly out the windows.

In the midst of all of this, something else hit me, a Beatles tune. I couldn’t even figure out which one. So I scrolled through the few Beatles songs on the iPod …because it’s obviously after 10pm and the majority of computer systems have already shut down. I didn’t find the one that I was thinking of but I hit “Dear Prudence” followed by “Eleanor Rigby”, “I am the Walrus”, and so on. It was cool.

Are we getting old ?

My routine is more routine and yet I don’t really mind it. My taste in music may be all over the map and yet I have discovered that the music of the 60’s was actually pretty good and there are even a bunch of stuff from the 70’s to discover. (I am still sane enough to not talk about the 80’s). Freddy Mercury was talented. Early Stones had less wrinkles. Frank actually could sing before he got the aura of a high class mob king pin.

Houses were stamped from cookies cutters. Fences where white. and streets were safe for playing stick ball and riding bikes. The president got in trouble. NASA went up in flames. Peace was in jeopardy. Politics became a chess (or pawn) game. Gas prices went through the roof. The war was unpopular. Japanese cars were king. The divide grew between the haves and the have nots. New drugs were highly desirable and the makers were criminal. TV was flexing its control over the ever more malliable consumer. There was talk of [the] U2 . The power of equality was spoken of in small towns across America.

They say everything that is old is new again. Are we getting old ? You tell me. I’m having a senior moment and don’t really care.

On this day … this eve, I hunt for the words that will explain what we seek. We wait for the time to expand and the will of the people to reveal itself. What it will reveal is much more than a man who will take the office. It is the hope and the challenge that is asked in the name of freedom. When Thomas Jefferson took the oath and took the office, he said to this nation;

During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution , all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things.

It is important to realize, while there will most assuredly be great challenges ahead; challenges from afar, challenges beyond manipulation and control, perhaps the greatest challenge and the greatest reward will be the establishment of a union of one people.

A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye — when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation, and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking.

 …

Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man;

Lest we forget …

… a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

Still, Jefferson understood his role. He was the president elected by the people. He was not more. At so, to our next president, or more to the point, to the nation we must remember; The president is a person. Not more. And people are not perfect. Not one of us.

I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it. Without pretensions to that high confidence you reposed in our first and greatest revolutionary character, whose preeminent services had entitled him to the first place in his country’s love and destined for him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history, I ask so much confidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal administration of your affairs. I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts.

First …

“I served 40 years in government and I’m not looking forward to a position or an assignment. Of course, I have always said if a president asks you to do something, you have to consider it.” – Colin L. Powell

Then …

“If asked if he wants to be Prime Minister, the generally acceptable answer for a politician is that while he does not seek the office, he has pledged himself to the service of his country, and that should his colleagues persuade him that that is the best way he can serve, he might reluctantly have to accept the responsibility, whatever his personal wishes might be.” – Sir Humphrey Appleby (character from Yes Minister TV series)