Every blogger in creation – even the ones who should instead be concentrating on earning money so they can throw Blogger Bashes – will be blogging about the inauguration of Barack Obama today. And rightly so; it’s a historic event and an achievement of which our country can justifiably be proud. If you had told me thirty years ago that one day a black man would be president…well, I wouldn’t have blinked, actually, because I was ten and very idealistic about America. But if you’d caught me a few years later, when the cynicism had set in, I would have been surprised.

Unsurprisingly to anyone who knows me, Mr. Obama is not, to say the least, on my political team. There is no doubt whatsoever that within a month I’ll be spluttering at the TV news and pounding out spasmodically pained editorial pieces about the latest Obama disaster and how he’s the Worst President Ever. But bearing that in mind, I do find myself with an elevated spirit today.

This is an optimistic moment for America, and – whatever policy disasters Mr. Obama leads us into – this cannot help but have a bracingly salutary effect on the racial divide in this country, which for years has been a quiet cancer on the soul of the republic. Every black child in the United States is about to see a black man taking the reins of the most powerful country of the world – a slap in the face to the still-animate ghost of a racist social order that proclaims blacks are fit only to entertain or to draw welfare checks, and a crushing blow to the “progressive” rhetoric of permanent racial oppression. To the person saying “you can’t do that because you aren’t good enough” and the person saying “you can’t do that because they won’t let you”, Barack Obama is a shining counterexample.

It’s nice to find out that my ten-year old self was the one with wisdom. Good morning, Mr. President. God bless you and godspeed.