I wanted something more. I wanted that deathless sound bite; that "Ask not what your country can do for you...", that "nothing to fear but fear itself." Nowhere in the speech, which was in my estimation an excellent one, was there anything that seemed to me to reach such a height. This was a speech characteristic of a former president of what has become a temple to the memory of Aleksei Stakhanov, the Harvard Law Review. As he spoke, I could imagine in the background the strains of that great hymn "Come, Labor On".
The speech posed a challenge. The new President said we were in a bad way, and that the only way out was through hard work. Come to think of it, that's just another way of saying, "Ask not what your country can do for you... ."
Update: Blue Texan finds a memorable quote, and makes a point with which I emphatically agree: the speech was anything but non- or post-partisan.
