Unfinished

I’m not usually a day drinker.

Wednesday morning, I made an exception.

A few minutes before 11 a.m. I popped the cork on a bottle of champagne and poured a glass.

Joe Biden was president.

While he spoke, I drained the whole bottle. By about four in the afternoon, I suffered for it, but really didn’t regret it one little bit. There are moments that demand celebration.

I will confess, as the day began, schadenfreude was close to the surface. I haven’t so enjoyed watching a helicopter take off since August 1974 with Richard Nixon aboard. I’ll refrain from sharing the explicit scatological sensation of the moment … let’s just say I felt profoundly, viscerally relieved.

It was over. Peacefully. Considering the drama of the preceding months, almost anticlimactically.

We could be thankful for that. And as the morning drew on, the unfolding of ritual and tradition further reinforced the sense that, in spite of everything, the republic would continue.

The republic would continue, but everywhere there were reminders that it would not continue unchanged. Four hundred thousand dead from an unchecked pandemic. Razor wire barricades and armed troops in response to a nearly unchecked mob. An empty chair where the outgoing president should have sat.

There were the inevitable dire comparisons. Lincoln on the eve of the Civil War. Roosevelt in the depth of the Great Depression. But the contrast I drew was with the inaugural images fixed in my memory as a child – then the youngest president ever inaugurated, now the oldest; of an old white man struggling to recite the poem written for the occasion and “a skinny black girl, descended from slaves, and raised by a single mother’ boldly proclaiming America “a notion that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.”

Unfinished. Is it possible to come up with a more appropriate, more hopeful word to sum up where we stand right now? “This is democracy’s day,” Biden began, “…democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile. And at this hour…democracy has prevailed.”

Sixty years ago, there was no question as to the strength of our democracy, no thought that it might, realistically, be challenged. American democracy was the rock on which the whole edifice of what we called the Free World was built. As far as Americans were concerned,  democracy was a done-deal.

Sixty years later we know better. The done-deal came whisper close to being undone. Democracy may have prevailed “at this hour,” but we’re no longer so confident of what may happen in the next.

That may well turn out to be a good thing. Thomas Jefferson is famously remembered for asserting that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” a foresight into the inevitable future challenges the democracy he envisioned would face and – hopefully -- defeat. We needn’t take those words literally – although bloodshed has proven to be the common accompaniment to crisis – but they do serve as a reminder that throughout its history rule by the people is a close run thing.

Sixty years ago, President Kennedy boasted Americans would “…pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” On Wednesday, a much more chastened chief executive called upon the American people to “end this uncivil war” and “restore the soul and restore the future of America.”

And it was Amanda Gorman, all of 23-years-old, who stepped up to proclaim faith in that future: “The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.”

That’s reason enough to celebrate.