Today, I tuned in to Pres­i­dent Obama’s coro­na­tion inau­gu­ra­tion. (From Nate Beeler polit­i­cal car­toons.) And speak­ing of tight­ened secu­rity, not every ticket-​holder got to see the cer­e­mony today.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not try­ing to soil the day or any­thing. It was a beau­ti­ful day, and despite the fum­ble on the oath of office -

which is to me the most impor­tant part of the day, his inau­gural address was mov­ing, and I, like many oth­ers, have high hopes that he can take our coun­try for­ward in the right direc­tion. (And a lit­tle word­ing prob­lem isn’t even close to what has gone wrong in the past.)

But are our hopes and expec­ta­tions too high? Obama is a man, not a super­hero (from Sin­fest), a saint, or a mes­siah. He received a man­date of the peo­ple to become Pres­i­dent, not a man­date of heaven to be King. The Found­ing Fathers wanted us to have a sim­ple cer­e­mony to remind us of that fact, but with every new pres­i­dent, it gets cra­zier and cra­zier.

And of course, there’s the grow­ing cov­er­age. Mov­ing way beyond the old-​school tele­vi­sion and radio, we have online stream­ing footage, a crowd-​sourced pho­to­synth, and even satel­lite cov­er­age by Google. (Which was claimed by CNN.)

I guess this is all a round­about way of say­ing, we all want the coun­try to move for­ward, but don’t expect Pres­i­dent Obama’s 100^th day in office to end with the Rap­ture. (I don’t agree with Lim­baugh, I just think pun­dits will always have a place.)