´Anything possible,´ Obama tells joyous crowd

Source: China Daily | 01-19-2009 09:00

WASHINGTON -- Two days from the White House, President-elect Barack Obama joined a vast throng Sunday at a joyous pre-inauguration celebration staged among marble monuments to past heroes. "Anything is possible in America," declared the man who will confront economic crisis and two wars when he takes office.

US President-elect Barack Obama speaks at the  'We Are One': Opening Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial Washington January 18, 2009.  [Agencies]

"Despite the enormity of the task that lies ahead, I stand here today as hopeful as ever that the United States of America will endure -- that it will prevail, that the dream of our founders will live on in our time," the president-elect said at the conclusion of a musical extravaganza that featured U2, Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen and a host of other stars.

Obama and his family held the seats of honor at the event, and a crowd of tens of thousands spilled from the base of the Lincoln Memorial toward the Washington Monument several blocks away in the cold, gray afternoon of mid-January.

It was the high point of a full day of pre-inaugural events that included a wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery and a morning church service where children recalled the life of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Obama's motorcade drew ever-larger crowds as the day wore on and he and his wife, Michelle, and their children Sasha and Malia crisscrossed the city.

"Just another typical Sunday," deadpanned the Rev. Derrick Harkins, pastor at the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church, where the soon-to-be first family prayed.

Of course it was anything but -- a run-up, in fact, to the first inauguration of an African-American president in a nation founded by slave-owners.