The newly-risen sun and the collective body heat generated by the massive crowd couldn’t keep my bones from trembling or my teeth from chattering. Packed among hundreds of people, I waited to get into the National Mall, where, along with the nine other Cornell Democrats who came to Washington DC, I would witness the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama, our 44th president.

The gates were supposed to have opened at seven in the morning, but it was almost 7:30, and the crowd had barely moved. One of the cops guarding the entrance picked up his loudspeaker and informed us that this section of the Mall, which we had waited two hours to get into, was closed.

The crowd started to disperse, and my fellow Cornell Dems and I were left wondering if we would see the event for which we had driven six hours and missed a whole day of classes.

As we ran from street to street trying to find a train station or another entrance to the Mall that wasn’t crammed with pedestrians, I thought of what our country had been through these past eight years—our worst terrorist attack, our worst natural disaster, a failing war, an ailing economy.

I also thought of George W. Bush, the man who during these horrible times had both led and misled our nation; who had said that intervening in another country would somehow protect our own, that cutting the taxes of the wealthy would make the whole nation richer; who had entrusted a seat on the Supreme Court to an unqualified joke, who had told Brownie, “You’re doing a heck of a job” in post-Katrina New Orleans.

But as I remembered the man whose administration was, fortunately, in its twilight hours, I also thought of Moses, the biblical hero raised by two races, who under the direction of God had led the Jewish people out of their worst period of history (so far) and into their Promised Land. Yet to reach their paradise, the Hebrews had to travel through the desert for forty years, and while Washington DC, with its millions of visitors and its ten-degree weather, was anything but a desert, my friends and I spent the next two hours wandering around the city like our Hebrew counterparts did through the Middle East.

And when we finally found a Jumbotron next to the Washington Monument, I’d like to think we felt at least an inkling of what my Jewish ancestors felt when they first gazed at their new homeland.

We were elated that we’d be able to witness the ceremony, but we were so far from the inauguration that we didn’t even need to go through a security check. Any farther, I joked, and we would’ve been back in Ithaca. Although the Jumbotron clearly displayed the inauguration proceedings, every so often I gazed at the far-off Capitol building, trying pointlessly to see some tiny dots moving around. (The telescope at our host family’s house would’ve really come in handy.) And while I gave up on my attempts to see the inauguration in person, being on a hill among thousands of onlookers certainly provided for its own special experience.

Together, we booed as members of the Bush administration and Republican congressmen formally entered the inauguration proceedings. Even Dick Cheney, who was stuck in a wheelchair (probably from his fortieth heart attack) wasn’t spared from our malice. But the worst of our hisses was reserved for the soon-to-be former president Bush. The only Cornell Democrat who was lucky enough to procure a ticket told us later that even right outside the Capitol there was a prevalent booing. “It was soft, but the wind picked it up. Bush had to have heard it.”

Less reserved than our admonishment of President Bush and his Republican cohorts was the cheers and applause that we gave to the Democratic officials who, over the past two-and-a-half years, had risen to the government’s highest positions. We howled for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, for former senator and future secretary Hillary Clinton, and for Vice President-Elect Joe Biden. We applauded former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. And we whopped and hollered for the next First Family—Michelle, Malia, and Sasha Obama.

Turning towards me, one of the Cornell Dems asked, “Aren’t we so lucky that this is happening when we’re in college?”

“We sure are,” I replied, but for me, my luck of being in college at this time extended far beyond the inauguration, or even Obama’s election. When I became eligible to vote in February of 2006, the Republicans had a majority of Congress and a man in the White House. My first election, the midterm elections of 2006, made the GOP the minority in Congress. And my first presidential election made a Democrat the president. So it wasn’t just my being in college during Obama’s election, but that my first election, in my first year of college, turned out to be the definitive turning point for the Democrats.

When President-Elect Obama finally made his appearance, I realized that he too had benefited from great timing. Imagine what Obama would’ve amounted to if he had been around fifty years ago. Or a hundred and fifty. Obama’s racial ethnicity, which in previous centuries and even decades would’ve prevented him seeking a political career altogether, had become the physical manifestation of change, of departure from an inept predecessor who had seemed groomed for the presidency, from his race to his parentage right down to his faux-military service.

Shocking as it was to see a president who was black, it was even more off-putting, after eight years, to hear a president who could speak. Obama’s inaugural address might’ve been the highlight of the proceedings, but it’s the smaller pieces of the ceremony that I remember the best—the sound delay on the Jumbotron that made Joe Biden sound like he was swearing in Justice Stevens; Obama’s pause after Chief Justice Roberts misquoted the Oath of Office; the reverend Joseph P. Lowery’s call for the “brown to stick around” and “the red man to get ahead, man.” And I remember how all the thousands of us in front of that Jumbotron reacted singularly to those events—with laughter and applause, with murmurs of confusion and cheers of “Yes, we did!”

“2012—Yes we can, again!” I shouted in front of a video camera after the inauguration had ended. I knew that it was naïve to call for Obama’s reelection when he hadn’t even been president for half an hour, and I knew how easy it was to mask my fear and uncertainty for the future with a statement of hope. I don’t know what kind of president Obama will be; at this time, nobody does. And though the time might come when even the most leftist of the left-wingers start to lose faith in Obama, we must make sure to never lose faith in our country, our government, and, most importantly, ourselves. After all, we’ve made it this far.

Author:  David Berezin