View from Italy -- Obama Inauguration Speech

About 30 minutes before the start of the inauguration ceremony, we got a call from our closest Italian friend. He said he'd left us a surprise. At the bottom of the stairs from our apartment, as we headed out to watch the inauguration at a local bar with a BBC satellite feed, we found awaiting us a bottle of prosecco (Italian champagne). Attached to it, a handwritten note: "Washington 12:00; Umbria 18:00. An important day for all who believe in peace, liberty and friendship!"

When we arrived a few minutes later at the bar, we found a small gathering of Americans and English-speaking Europeans. We cheered when Aretha sang, were moved by the John Williams composition and positively exulted along with the throngs at the National Mall six hours away in Washington as soon as the oath of office was administered. And like tens of millions of other people around the world, we listened carefully to every word of our new President's sober inaugural address.

Watching the reactions in our small group to the speech was revealing.

The Americans in the room, including us - and the throngs gathered at the Mall - seemed most overly demonstrative at the passages in Obama's speech that emphasized American exceptionalism (in the most positive sense of the word). The applause lines and teary eyes came when Obama invoked the images of a nation that is singular in the world. A nation of unequaled diversity and tolerance; a nation with an unwavering commitment to individual rights and freedoms; a nation that has overcome divisions and hardships in the past to unite to fight for a common, civic good and can do so again; a nation that will once again be the inspiration for all who aspire for democracy and freedom wherever they live.

The Europeans in the room seemed most effusive during the parts of the speech that emphasized American integrationism. The points in the address when Obama definitively rejected the go-it-alone approach of the past eight years were the ones they applauded: His acknowledgment that American consumption was (a large) part of the cause of global warming and that America has an obligation to actively participate in solving the environmental crisis; his clear signals that the era of the Bush isolationist foreign policy is over and there will be a renewed a commitment to work along side - not against - our allies; his references to the fact that no nation in the First World can continue to ignore poverty outside of its borders; and his promise to actively reach out to the Muslim world.

Even though we were hardly a scientific sampling, in our little group the reactions to the duality in the speech's message seemed clear. The Americans seemed most stirred by the Rooseveltian and Kennedyesque imagery: A call to action for a great, unique and resolute nation that must - and will - muster its collective strength and commit to personal sacrifice in order to overcome all obstacles and achieve its destiny and lead the world. The Europeans were most positive when Obama invoked Wilsonian imagery: A belief that only way the world's problems will be solved is if America joins wholeheartedly alongside all of the world's other democracies to collectively and cooperatively address the very serious challenges that now confront us. Perhaps what is most important is if we, like our new President, can synthesize both visions of America: a nation that is unique and resolute but one that leads and inspires by example and cooperation; a nation that is ready to engage in solving the world's problems head-on because it understands it cannot but do otherwise.

A couple of hours after the inauguration was over we called back our friend to thank him for the prosecco and ask him his reaction to the speech. "You have your new President," he said. "And I think the world will be a better place."