Emily's Blahg

I just finished reading Memo to the President Elect by Madeline Albright. She had some thoughts I found quite appropriate for today, Inauguration Day.

"Our sixteenth and greatest president did not suffer from lack of advice. Since he was thought by so many to be unfit for the office , he was lectured at--in print, at public meetings, even ridiculed to his face. Everyone, it seemed knew better than he how to win the war, reunited the nation, and handle the question of slavery. The story is told that after one especially condescending harangue, delivered with fault-finding zeal by a delegation of New England clergymen, Lincoln asked quietly: "Gentlemen, do you remember that a few years ago a man named Blondin walked across a tightrope stretched over the falls of Niagara?" The men nodded their heads, so Lincoln continued:
Suppose that all the material values in this great country of ours, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, its wealth, its prosperity, its achievements in the present and its hopes for the future--could all have been concentrated and given to Blondin to carry over that awful cross and that their preservation should have depended on his ability to somehow get them across to the other side--and suppose that everything you yourself held dearest in the world, the safety of your family, and the security of your home, also depended upon his crossing?
And suppose you had been on the shore when he was going over, as he was carefully feeling his way along and balancing his pole with all his skill, proceeding with slow, cautious steady steps over the thundering abyss. What would you have done? Would you have begun to shake the cable and shout at him, "Blondin! stand up a little straighter! Blondin! stoop a little more; go a little faster; lean more to the south! Now lean a little more to the north!" Or would you have stood there speechless and held your breath and prayed to the Almighty to guide and help him safely through the trial?

...So God bless you, Mr. President, and keep you and guide you, and help you."