A Long Wait For A Long Drive

摘要

It's just before 7:30 p.m., on the eve of Martin Luther King Day, and I've arrived at a banquet hall west of Chicago. Some 570 pilgrims, mostly African-American and mostly constituents of Congressman Danny Davis, are preparing to board 10 buses en route to hotels across the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.With all the talk about hope, mine, right now, is to step off the motor coach there having registered not merely the joy about the inauguration of Barack Obama, but the reservations. I've had my own: what would George Washington, who abdicated the presidency rather than let himself be anointed a terrestrial god, think of the near deification of his 43rd successor? I recalled what Joan Didion wrote about the e-mails., she got-"Again and again, perfectly sentient adults cited the clinching arguments made on the candidate's behalf by their children." It bothered her: "Naivete, translated into 'hope,' was now in."