Ambitious agenda

Re: Obama comes out swinging in inaugural address, Jan. 22.

After a bruising first term, the president unveils an ambitious agenda for his second four years in power.

Americans seem to wake up every morning and have a bout of amnesia. After all the hoopla of President Barack Obama taking the oath again (even though he was still president) what has really changed? It’s the same president with the same Congress — so are Obama’s ambitious plans going anywhere? I seriously doubt it.

Americans are masters of the “big sell,” but hyperbole only takes you so far. America is still in a mess, and it’s going to take more than politically opposed politicians to change things.

I travelled through the States when I was a kid (my mother didn’t like cottages) — I’ve been in 46 out of 50 states and the America of my youth is not the America of today. The large middle class has gone. The manufacturing nation has dried up. Americans themselves hate each other more today than in earlier days. There is a strong comparison here to the fall of Rome. In order for America to regain its footing at home and abroad, they are going to have to look into the mirror and take a long, hard look at themselves. Fancy dancing balls, and dancing with the president, and highfalutin’ ambitions may no longer be the answer.

The one thing Americans have going for them, though, is that they are good at re-creation, at reinventing themselves — this may be the key — but first they have to figure out where they are headed and agree as a nation.

As Obama is fond of saying, they are the United States of America. Can America be fixed? Sadly, that is up to America, for after a while, the rest of the world will no longer be interested in the constant infighting and non-direction found in present-day America.

Great nations come and go (eventually), so let’s hope that somehow the Americans can lift themselves up, dust themselves off and start all over again.

DOUGLAS CORNISH, Ottawa