Instead, he did the extraordinary. He stepped up to the microphone and on day one of his new job announced that you too will have a new job soon. He told his people that the stuff they had lost was just stuff and that it could be worse. He told them that we’re going to figure it out and that we’ll work on it together. He told them fear comes from the unknown, so let’s focus on the known and fix what we can see in front of us. I have no idea how this came off to the people who were starving and living in shanties in Central Park, but in retrospect, I must admit, it had the courage and vision this country needed at the time.

 

The speech was a practical miracle, to coin an oxymoron. It was a compact between president and people. It was a commitment to figuring this out together.  It was a declaration that we were getting up off the mat and going one more round.