That was the song President Obama and his wife danced to at last night’s Neighborhood Ball, sung by Beyonce no less, reprising her Etta James impression from Cadillac Records. How perfect, not just because all the women (and some men) I know swoon for the first hunky president since JFK the way the strings swayed behind Etta as she celebrated the arrival of the love she had so long dreamed of, but because those of us pulling for Barack feel like we’ve been waiting a lifetime.

The country’s been waiting a long time, too. The president himself pulled from another book of standards in his inauguration address when he quoted scripture, saying it was time for us to put away childish things. Our last massive wake-up call came on 9.11, of course, when history gave us a vicious blow. Grow up, goddamit! the attacks that day seemed to cry. Stop pretending you have no role in the rest of the world, that you are somehow free from the cares that shape the rest of the planet, and there was a hopeful moment, in NY at least, when all the books on Islam and the Arab world were stripped from the shelves of the bookstores and a lot of people rushed to understand what had just happened. 

You can’t blame Bush for the national somnolence that followed; if he and his handlers were determined to see the attacks in simple black-white, good guy-bad guy terms it was unlikely he was going to ask the country to do anything more complex. (Indeed, the words “George W. Bush” and “complex” seldom appear in the same sentence.) But by telling us to travel and shop and act as if nothing new had happened (until he needed the tragedy as an excuse to wage an unnecessary war), he was encouraging our national adolescence. And within months of September 11th, 2001, American Idol was on top of the ratings and we were lulled back into dreamland.

By evoking the first letter of Paul of Tarsus to the Corinthians, Obama seeks to wake us to tasks ahead, at home and abroad. For a lot of retirees, the dream is already over; those heavily invested in the stock market and on the verge of retirement have literally awoken to find that they are going to be living a lot less comfortably, and working a lot longer — if they can find a job in their sixties. 

But there’s promise in that message. As sobering as his 18-minute speech was, it was also optimistic: We must do this, we can do this. He drew on history and our better nature. And this was not some Jimmy Carter-style scolding, he’s not talking about taking joy away; it was there in the presence of his daughters and in Aretha Franklin’s singing. And yes, you can still watch TV, and not just the news networks!

I’m not a snob; one of my favorite moments in television drama in the last ten years came on the old NYPD Blue. The irascible, always struggling alcoholic Detective Andy Sipowicz lost his son in the line of duty, and in a nightmare he sees the killing take place before his eyes and is helpless to prevent it. Too late he realizes the trucker in the baseball cap hauling his slain child away is Jesus, taking him to his reward. “All I wanted was a second chance!” Andy cries and the truck stop Jesus says, “What do you think this is?”

Andy awakens from his dream to find his new baby crying, in need of care. The task begins again and the hope is that he’s learned something.