Into this mess comes the relative inexperience of Bush, whose vice president voted against Head Start and among whose first official acts was to declare Sunday a national day of prayer and thanks-giving.

Asking Americans to "bow their heads in humility before our heavenly Father" as well as making eight explicitly religious references during his 14-minute inaugural speech worries those who know it will take a lot more than prayer to solve our social problems.

Bush's inaugural rendition of the time-honored slogans of our democracy, of living in a "new world that became a friend and liberator of the old" and "a slave-holding society that became a servant of freedom," do not match the age in which we live so much as his other comments on the persistence of poverty, at-risk children and prisons.

While triumph is part of our history, so too is the economic and social conditions that fostered the brutal gang rape of two mentally retarded children.

Keeping this in mind helps explain why the pageantry of democracy surrounding Bush's address did not assuage the unease felt by many at entrusting the fate of our nation to an executive who prefers short work days and whose background does not seem to include involvement with the issues he is now charged to address. And while his inaugural may not have fully come to terms with the darker side of America, we can only hope his presidency will.

Christopher M. Kirchhoff '01 is a history and science studies concentrator in Winthrop House.