Radio Australia Today Editorial

Barack Obama has his Moment of Silence

21 January 2009

After all the political factioning, wooing, nominating, debating, voting and choosing, the day has arrived. Barack Hussein Obama has taken the oath of office to become the 44th President of the United States.

By now he would’ve experienced that moment that we in broadcasting have all experienced. The moment of silence. It is when we first host a major TV or radio program. The introductions and fanfare have happened, and the world goes quiet waiting for your first words. In your head you know that it is for you to mess up or to succeed. There is no-one else to help. I remember my first moment of silence. It surprised me. I had done all the preparation for my first major radio program, but I didn’t see the moment of silence coming. I remember the hiss of the headphones as the listeners, the wife, the boss waited for me to start. It was only a moment, but it has lasted across the years for me. Since then I have been in television and have done live TV crosses from location, and no moment of silence has been as great, or as daunting as that first one.

Yes, I wonder what went through Barack Obama’s head as he sat in the Oval Office and took in his moment of silence before making his first snappy decisions of office. Shock, would be my guess. He fought for four years to get to this place. It was a tough series of battles to get to the White House. First he had to get the favour of his party, then fight off a tough and experienced Clinton team. Then to overcome prejudice and John McCain. He overcame. He is a political warrior.

But being a president is not about being a warrior. It is about leading his country  into a changed world. Being a warrior has nothing to do with improving a seriously flawed health system, a growing line of poverty-stricken, a deficit in the trillions, failing manufacturing industries, a rising atmospheric temperature.

It rests on his shoulders that every decision he will make will create jobs and destroy jobs. Many of the decisions he will make will save lives or end lives. Too many presidents have made decisions too quickly and have trusted their advisors just a little too much, and the results have sometimes been disastrous.

For a president disaster walks in hand with success. Barack Obama will make mistakes. Perhaps he already has. His every word carries weight. It is his actions that will prove whether he is capable enough of making deeds that match his warrior rhetoric.

These are the things that would have shot through his mind in his moment of silence.

                                              – Phil