From Tufts University Medical Center (Chinatown):
Watching this with medical students and faculty was interesting: the line from the Inaugaration speech that drew instinctive applause from this particular gathering was “we shall restore Science to its rightful place.” They did not cheer the line about “the wholesale redistibution of land and the dispersal of the gentry.”
More of Boston today:
Obama’s long-term success–not the political success of his administration, but its ultimate effect on the floundering ship of state–will depend on how far from the mainstream he can run. Whic is probably gonna be not very. But he seems to be a genuinely good man and an exceptionally smart one and one with a degree of what I guess is called character, and the country seems to ready to respond to him, and he’s probably about good as we can expect, and following a series of presidents missing sanity (Nixon), authority (Carter), compassion (Reagan), sincerity (Clinton), intelligence/self-awareness/humility/ (Bush 2), that may well be saying something.
But it was another very bad day for money. I don’t know enough about money to know whether anyone knows enough about money to really understand what can be done. Especially when the markets may well be behaving exactly as they are supposed to be, only now maybe they aren’t acting in America’s best interests all the time. A conundrum for capitalists, that.
In any case it was lots more fun when other stuff mattered, like stem cell research and gay weddings and intelligent design. Even the war made sense–it was obviously wrong. And on that Obama can issue imperial edicts: “redeploy all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months.” Or, “Redeploy them to Afghanistan; bid them raze Kabul, yeah, burn it to cinders; for the sight of it offends me, and the remembrance of it causeth me grief.”
Try that on Wall St.
