And so it begins

Hopefully Barack Obama’s presidency will go better than the first five minutes. In a bit of nerves and comedy, Mr. Obama jumped the gun and began repeating the oath of office before Chief Justice John Roberts finished giving him the first line Tuesday. Then Roberts screwed up the next line. Mr. Obama realized it, smiled and gave Roberts a chance to correct it. Roberts did, but Obama went with the messed-up line Roberts initially gave him. I’m guessing it’s the first mistaken presidential oath since Richard Nixon added a superfluous "and" in the line "preserve, (and) protect and defend" in 1973.

The chief-justice-caused blunder behind him, Mr. Obama began his highly-anticipated inaugural address. He made it exactly two sentences before his first mistake as President. "Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath," he said. The problem is, he became just the 43rd American to take the oath and serve as president. Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. That means even though Mr. Obama is No. 44, he is just the 43rd person in the office. And you thought electoral math was confusing.

We’ll let all that slide, though. After all, most people probably would have passed out, vomited or wet their pants upon walking out in front of 1.4 million people for the biggest moment of their life and one of the biggest in the history of the nation. Plus, I’ll give him points for realizing Roberts screwed up the oath to begin with. But the ceremonies behind him, President Obama now faces a set of crises that will be far more daunting than Inauguration Day. Regardless of your political beliefs or who you voted for last year, it is time for America to reunite behind its new leadership. We face problems that will not be solved by bickering, fighting and finger-pointing. Our new president called on Americans to put this type of ridiculousness aside. If anyone can find a reason why he’s not right about this, I’d like to know it.

I’m now in the sixth presidency of my lifetime. That may not be a lot in the grand scheme of things, but I know that the way we’ve acted as Americans during the bulk of those administrations won’t help us right now. I don’t know that I like or agree with the notion of state-sponsored work programs like a modern-day New Deal, but I can’t necessarily find a way to argue against it given the circumstances of what’s going on in our country right now. It is tough to argue the programs Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated in the face of the Great Depression did not help resurrect the United States from our greatest crisis since the Civil War. That crisis, by the way, was remedied, specifically in the south, by Reconstruction, another period where government footed the bill for to keep people afloat and give them a chance. As for New Deal, it’s credited with so many of the advancements that made America a true super power, including paving the way for our leadership in defeated the Axis powers in World War II.

So here is the question: Do we stick to our free market guns and let Social Darwinism run its course? Or do we allow government to step in as it has done in the past, despite our concerns about walking the fine line between government assistance and socialism? America has elected leaders to make those decisions for us. How do you think they should act? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.