MY FAVORITE piece of Barack Obama inauguration memorabilia was something I saw in ABC Carpet as early as Christmas: a white living-room chair, modern and austere, with Obama heads printed on its fabric.
In democracies, vulgarity is a form of honor – so presidential kitsch is as all-American as George Washington and Honest Abe hawking cars and washing machines in February.
Hype, which trickles down from ideologues and publicists, is a less honest phenomenon, but it, too, has a long pedigree in this country. Journalists as a class crank it out whenever they see a politician who, they imagine, resembles themselves: John Kennedy and Barack Obama, two author-presidents, both received large helpings of it.
NEW ERA AS BAM TAKES THE REINS
MR. COOL CHILLS OUT BEFORE BIGGEST DAY
HEY, WHEN YOU”RE DONE WITH THAT, CAN YOU FIX THE ECONOMY?
OPINION: TIME WILL TELL IF HE LIVES UP TO HYPE
EDITORIAL: OBAMA’S OPPORTUNITY
Have photos of Inauguration celebrations? Upload them here or text them to upost@nypost.com.
Video Series: What Obama’s Presidency Means
Obamania, however, has a unique, irreducible cause: His election turned a page in the history of race in America.
A block from my apartment building stands a welfare office, and on the sidewalk before the entrance a vendor sells books and other paraphernalia for children. Two of his ever-present items are plastic placemats: one of famous African-Americans, the other of America’s presidents. New editions of those placemats will have a face in common.
Whether that will help the children of the men and women going in and out of the building remains to be seen. But the struggle against legal and professional barriers has ended at the highest level. Black Americans feel satisfaction; all of us can feel pride.
Everything else about this new administration is up for grabs. Some epochal incoming presidents represent a revolution in policy and politics. Thomas Jefferson rebuked the high taxes and military spirit of the Federalists. Abraham Lincoln vowed to end the expansion of slavery. Ronald Reagan promised a new direction in taxation and the Cold War.
But other new presidents make their mark simply because of who they are. Andrew Jackson won his first term as a frontier fighter and an outsider. Franklin Roosevelt’s remedies for the Great Depression were nebulous enough, but voters trusted him to be more imaginative than Herbert Hoover.
Obama takes office after a campaign that was inspirational but elusive. His political record as a state legislator and senator is on the left of his party. But he has shown that he knows how to strike out on his own.
Read his discussion of “Andy Kaufman,” the community organizer who brings him to Chicago in “Dreams from My Father.” There comes a point where the young Obama realizes that Kaufman’s way can’t be his. The new way he then follows takes him to the church of the Rev Jeremiah Wright. But we all remember what happened to Wright when he became troublesome to his protégé.
We are inaugurating a man who has lived an unusually displaced life – an absent father, a roaming mother. These circumstances have made Obama used to calling his own tune. What tune that will be is something we – and perhaps he – will have to find out as his presidency unfolds.
Richard Brookhiser’s latest book is “George Washington on Leadership.”