A Few Thoughts on Inauguration Day...

SEATTLE, WASH. -- Just over four years ago, I had barely begun my service in the United States Senate. My boss at the time was the top Republican on the Senate Rules Committee, the committee that oversees all inauguration events. So, much to my delight, I was incredibly pleased to receive seated tickets to the historic inauguration of President Obama. One for me, and enough for everyone in my family who wanted to come. So, my parents flew to town, and both of my sisters came too.

It was an exciting time. Whether you were Republican or Democrat, you couldn't help but feel at least a tinge of excitement that history was in the making and we were lucky enough to watch it firsthand. There was such great exhilaration in the air that frigid morning, that I made this little video to try to capture the essence of it... 

While the results of the last four years, in my conservative eyes, may have been underwhelming at best, it was still neat to watch our President be sworn into office during that historic day four years ago. I will always remember the energy there, how much I shivered, and our attempts at maneuvering through the biggest crowd I have ever seen.

Like many of you, I would have liked (loved) to have seen another candidate being sworn in today. But that's how things go... Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't. And life goes on all the same.

One of the things that really irked me during this presidential campaign though, was the nastiness/ignorance I saw on display on social media... blogs, Twitter, Facebook in particular. People declared such ridiculous things, like "He hates our country!" and "He wants our country to fail!" WHAT?! Are you serious? So absurd! While I appreciated the fact that people actually wanted to be involved in politics (because, let's be honest, how often does that happen?), and cared enough about what was happening in our country to want to have a voice, it made me want to tune out the campaigns entirely. I quickly got disgusted with the entire thing and couldn't wait for it to all be over.

While our President's ideas over his last term of how to solve our country's problems are far from how you or I might go about solving them, (and quite frankly he has done an incredibly poor job at reviving our economy, and his ideas (or lack of them) of how to drive down our country's ballooning debt are weak (I could go on...)), but it doesn't mean he doesn't love our country because of it. The man, along with any other politician who gets brutally ridiculed, has dedicated his life to serving our country. I'm pretty sure patriotism is deeply rooted at anyone's core if they go so far as to run for any kind of public office at all. It has to be.

A wise U.S. Senator once said, "There are problems where government is the solution. But not always. There are some problems where free markets is the solution. But not always. But let us understand in the debate, that as we go back and forth between these two concepts, that we do not question the motives or the patriotism of anyone on the other side."

Those words have stuck with me over the years. So, let's hope these next four years are filled with respect, peace, kind words of encouragement, prayer, and solutions that help put our country in the right direction. We're all Americans, after all. Happy Inauguration Day!