The media would have us believe that the event over which everybody and the BBC in particular are salivating, Barack Obama's inauguration next Tuesday, is the start of history. It will be 146 years to the month when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation having warned, earlier, that in states that were in rebellion on the first day of 1863 he would declare their slaves "then, henceforward and forever free".
Perversely, when I should be reading Obama's The Audacity of Hope, I am deep into a re-read of Edmund Morris's 800-page biography Dutch - A Memoir of Ronald Reagan. I will not have finished it before Obama boards the train which, loaded with symbolism and a little self-importance, will take him to Washington in the rail tracks of Abraham Lincoln, Republican and 16th President of the United States.
Reagan first, though. Lifeguard, student strike activist, footballer, a Democrat when he voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932 and Roosevelt's ticket was individualism, states' rights, reduced government ("I didn't leave the Democrat Party" Reagan was to say later, "it left me"), graduate, broadcaster, actor, soldier, communist sympathiser for a while, virulent anti-communist thereafter, governor of California for eight years, and poet, too.
Budgets/battles/phonecalls/hassles/letters/meetings/luncheons/speeches/politics and press releases/news conferences/delegations. Plaques and presentations. Travels/briefings/confrontations/crises/routines/mediations. Eight years pass swiftly. But I look out the window. The elm in the park looks just the same.
In 1981 he became President; after the loss of the Vietnam war, prosecuted by John Fitzgerald Kennedy (Democrat), Lyndon Johnson (Democrat) and Richard Nixon (Republican) in which 400,000 American soldiers lost their lives; after the Nixon Watergate scandal; after the disastrous presidency of Jimmy Carter (Democrat) who left 400 American hostages in Iran.
Long before the 44th President reached the White House and everybody and Obama's dog were muttering about his legacy from George Bush (perversely, some will be inclined to say, I continue to think that if Iraq holds, that legacy will be revised), long before that, Reagan inherited a country demoralised to the depth of its soul.
Shot at, two-and-a-half months into his presidency, "Honey", he told his wife. "I forgot to duck!" And the doctors lined up around him dressed in green: "Please tell me you're Republicans!" Neither remark is apocryphal; either could be straight from a film script.
He called a spade a spade, accused the Soviet Union, openly, of lying and cheating, described it as "an evil empire", an observation that had loony lefties and limp liberals going through the metaphorical roof. He rolled out his Strategic Defence Initiative, became Margaret Thatcher's darling and she, his; and along with Pope John Paul II, brought down the "evil empire". He revitalised America. I understand this is what Obama intends to do; again. Men of goodwill will wish him well and nowhere will the gushing be greater, on Tuesday, than in the studios of the BBC and wherever it is that Simon Schama will be watching the ceremony.
Ahead for the new president, the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the Iran nuclear question, a growling Russian bear, Afghanistan, to which he has committed himself, an Iraq bravely trying to find itself, terrorism and, the trillion dollar question, the economy.
Some insist, nonsensically, that these are Bush's legacy; not so. The first has been on the desks of Democrat and Republican presidencies since 1948; the second was created by Iran, but we'll come back to this later; Russian growls have long been part of the international scenario; the fourth has its genesis in Clinton, who fluffed it; the fifth is indisputably Bush's baby and the baby of every Western intelligence service; the sixth took on its present profile during Clinton's watch. He never recognised it for what it was; and the seventh, market-madness, strikes as market madness must, whenever, wherever it will.
Back to Iran; at her confirmation hearing Obama's secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, spoke of engagement with everybody except Hamas (music to Israel's ears, surely) but including Iran. She reminded her audience that a nuclear-armed Iran was unacceptable to Obama, which raises the question as to what engagement will deliver.
When, on the hustings, Obama spoke about meeting Iran's leaders directly, Clinton had openly ridiculed him. Herein lies the new administration's first weakness. Too many brilliant "tsars". Try this: "...we are willing to lead tough and principled diplomacy...at the (sic) time and place of our choosing - if and only if - it can advance the interest of the United States". And if Iran is not happy with the place and time of her choosing?
A decision well received
Time enough still to say farewell to Eddie Fenech Adami, whose presidency comes to an end in nearly two-and-a-half months' time. So for the time being it is 'hello' to the President-in-waiting George Abela, whose nomination was greeted across the social and political spectrum. It says much for the selector and the selected that this was the case and Abela, who swiftly demonstrated his finesse by asking the media to resist the temptation to ask for interviews - for Malta has its President at the moment - must be delighted his appointment received general assent.
And yet, how strange the turns life takes. A year ago, Abela threw his hat into the political ring in a bid for the leadership of the Labour Party. Surprisingly, the bid failed. He had much going for him, not least maturity. Unfortunately he had been too long out of touch with the party machinery, which decided the way it did. He was also guilty, in the eyes of those who did not vote for him, of a political integrity they did not understand, like stepping down from the winning team in 1998 and taking on the General Workers' Union when he thought it was losing its marbles and showing no signs of having found them.
Perhaps Abela would have preferred the political prize, who knows? Perhaps not.
Quo vadis?
Last Wednesday some 10,000 people gathered in Mexico City to attend the tri-annual World Encounter of Families. The congress has for its theme, 'The family, teacher of human and Christian values', and will be focusing on three areas: Family relations and family values, the family and sexuality, and the educational vocation of the family.
The preparatory catechetical emphasis that will inform the congress is formidable. It amounts to a recognition of the assault being made on the family, without the civilising influence of which, society must disintegrate. This is a prospect that delights secular humanists and the leader of the Social Democrat party in the host country - with all of three representatives in the Mexican Congress - has been claiming, among other absurdities, that Mexico's increasing level of violent crime is caused by traditional families rather than family breakdown.
What the congress knows for certain is that births are falling to an alarming degree, population replacement has entered a negative stage in Europe - 1.3 per family when mere replacement requires 2.1 children per family - and abortion has become one of the two leading causes of death in Europe; cancer the other. In short, there is a catastrophic demographic shortfall, brought about by the trinity of abortion, birth control and the disconnection between sexuality and reproduction. Without babies, more divorces and fewer fathers to look after children who still manage to get born, Europe is slowly dying; is, indeed, on the way to becoming a 'mission'. It seems that God and Humanae Vitae, which predicted this and far more that has since come to pass, are not mocked.
National conference on marriage
Nor has Malta been immune to developments threatening the family; so the national conference on marriage taking place on February 7 could not be timelier. Organised by Proġett Żwieġ b'Saħħtu (PZBS) an organisation set up in February 2007 to promote healthier and stronger marriages, the theme chosen for the conference is 'Żwieġ - Quo Vadis?'. PZBS, which has under its mantle Cana, Caritas and the Diocesan Family Commission, has much to offer today's society, much to work for, much to work against. There have been, and continue to be, attempts to weaken the marriage structure and we, too, have come into the firing line.
PZBS deserves to be the vanguard that will provide not only the protection of marriage as an institution. More to the point, it has to be the institution's foremost catechetic. One gets the impression, I hope I am wrong, that it needs greater recognition and more official backing, moral and financial, from the bishops. Its objective is admirable, but this is not enough.
The main speakers will be Harry Benson, founder of the Bristol Community Family Trust, and Fr Paul Galea, lecturer in Pastoral Psychology in the faculty of Theology at the University. MPs Edwin Vassallo and Justyne Caruana will give their reactions to Fr Galea's paper and Archbishop Paul Cremona will deliver a closing address.