Today I will be attending my first presidential inauguration with my lovely and gracious wife, Elizabeth.
We've been living in the Washington area for 16 years, so it's not like we haven't had other opportunities.
It's that we just haven't had the desire.
In fact, the last inauguration I would have appreciated attending took place in 1985, but I was living in California. I had switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party to vote for Ronald Reagan. I didn't realize at the time that it would be another 32 years before I would have a strong desire to attend the swearing-in of a president. I might have made the effort had I known – but had I known it would be that long before I felt good about a president, I think I would have been very depressed thinking about it.
No, George H.W. Bush didn't thrill me. I knew what he was – an establishment Republican, placed on the ticket to ensure one of their own would be back.
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No, Bill Clinton was a nightmare. I knew what he was and spent eight years exposing him, making me a big target, giving me a prominent place on his enemies list, ensuring my taxes were audited, my offices broken into and giving my next of kin doubts that I would make it through eight years without joining his death list.
No, George W. Bush didn't do anything for me. Sure, he was an improvement over Al Gore, but that's not saying much.
I won't even mention Barack Obama. (Whoops! I mentioned him.)
This time, Elizabeth asked me if we could go.
Not only did we both want to go to this historic event, we have plenty of friends working for Donald Trump and his incoming administration.
That's been even more rare over the last 32 years.
But I'm not just attending because of the historical significance. I'm attending because I have great hopes for this White House.
I had become so dispirited about politics and Washington since Reagan, I didn't think I would ever see in my lifetime another president that would give me hope again. As a whole, the Republican Party had let us down – big-time! It squandered its power when it controlled Congress. It didn't fight back. It was intimidated by the left. It was afraid of the so-called "mainstream media." It abused the Constitution. It was embarrassed by people who actually respected it. It was more like the Democratic Party-lite.
Without getting too jubilant, the 2016 election seems to have changed all that for the time being. For the first time in a long time, there is a real prospect for changing the direction of the country, not just slowing down ever-so-slightly in the same lane.
What the recent past has taught me, however, was that politics alone cannot preserve all that is good and decent about our country. I have no illusions about that. Politics is very much downstream from culture and, even more important, from the spiritual realm.
Our culture is not just coarse; it's defiled, unclean, polluted, depraved.
It's almost a miracle America was still capable of making the right choice in 2016. Obviously, if our brilliant founders had not had the foresight and vision to give us the Electoral College, Americans would have made the wrong choice.
So we have our work cut out for us over the next few years.
And that work includes much prayer and repentance by God's people in America.
Today would be a very good day for all of us to start embracing that call.
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