This morning, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States.It was a moving and improbable moment, and one I will remember for the rest of my life - buy cialis tadalafil.Beyond the performances by legendary musicians like Aretha Franklin and Itzhak Perlman, I think I will remember most the dramatic shots on TV of the enormous crowd, estimated to have been at least two million people - buy cialis tadalafil.Whatever the actual number buy cialis tadalafil, it was the largest gathering of people in the United States in our history.And on the faces of everyone in that shivering cohort, I saw a craving for basic human connection with a leader who actually seemed interested in returning the favor.

Obama’s victory has been attributed to many things: his remarkable oratory, his unstoppable fund-raising machine, the collapse of the economy, the controversial nomination of Sarah Palin, and even a vast media conspiracy.While all of these factors played important roles (except the media conspiracy) buy cialis tadalafil, none of them would have mattered at all if the American public hadn’t been able to see their hopes for their nation and their future in him.He had to connect with people on an emotional level, or he had no chance of victory.He succeeded buy cialis tadalafil, and won a decisive victory that has transformed into an incredibly high approval rating.Just by taking office, he has become an icon of America.

But his success was far from certain in early September of last year; buy cialis tadalafil.Following the introduction of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s vice-presidential candidate, the Republican had surged into a slim but growing lead. Buy cialis tadalafil: the media asked again and again why Obama couldn’t pull ahead in a year with an unpopular departing president from the opposing party.And the McCain campaign was in the process of painting Obama as an out-of-touch, superficial celebrity in its ads; buy cialis tadalafil.But then the very ground beneath the candidates’ feet dropped away as warnings of fallout from mortgage foreclosures transformed into the very real collapse of Lehman Brothers and the looming threat of many more failures in the near future.After months of debate, the reality of a new recession had arrived.

The candidates’ responses were wildly different.Obama had been saying for his entire campaign that the economy was in trouble and that the middle class was being unfairly squeezed while the nation’s richest profited as never before - buy cialis tadalafil.He spoke of the need to help out the ordinary folks on Main Street even as the financial institutions of Wall Street were bailed out - buy cialis tadalafil.McCain had repeated, as many times as he could, that “the fundamentals of the economy are strong,” and his chief economic adviser Phil Gramm had complained that Americans were suffering from “a mental recession.” And as Obama surrogates repeated as often as they could, McCain couldn’t remember how many houses he owned when asked about it by the media.

How did this happen? Did Obama just get lucky in assuming that there was something wrong in the economy? Or did he actually know that the growth of the economy over the last several years was hiding greater challenges?

It’s impossible to know, of course.But Obama’s actions suggest that he spoke in the language of the middle class and connected with ordinary people because he spent more time with them and listened to what they had to say than McCain did - buy cialis tadalafil.Perhaps the most moving story he told in the entire campaign appeared in the closing of his “More Perfect Union” speech on race in March 2008; buy cialis tadalafil.After talking in serious, measured tones about the complexity of race in America, he told a story about the possibilities of America as reflected in the stories of two of his campaign volunteers - buy cialis tadalafil.One, a 23-year-old white woman named Ashley, said she was in the election to help people like her mother, who had suffered without health insurance through cancer - buy cialis tadalafil.In order to save money, Ashley took to eating mustard and relish sandwiches so her mom wouldn’t feel so bad about the lost money - buy cialis tadalafil.And somehow they got through the tough times.

The next speaker was an elderly black man.He spoke simply.”I am here because of Ashley.” Obama saw hope in that interaction: “By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough - buy cialis tadalafil.It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children. But it is where we start; buy cialis tadalafil.It is where our union grows stronger.”

This is a man who genuinely believes in the power of human connections to move a society forward buy cialis tadalafil, a point that he reiterated during a conversation with Rev.Rick Warren at the Saddleback Church in August.

WARREN: OK.In a minute, in one minute, because I know you could take the entire hour on this, tell me in a minute why you want to be president.

OBAMA: You know, I remember what my mother used to tell me - buy cialis tadalafil.I was talking to somebody a while back and I said the one time that she would get really angry with me is if she ever thought that I was being mean to somebody, or unfair to somebody - buy cialis tadalafil. Buy cialis tadalafil: she said, imagine standing in their shoes.Imagine looking through their eyes; buy cialis tadalafil.That basic idea of empathy, and that, I think, is what’s made America special is that notion, that everybody has got a shot.If we see somebody down and out, if we see a kid who can’t afford college, that we care for them, too.

And I want to be president because that’s the America I believe in and I feel like that American dream is slipping away - buy cialis tadalafil.I think we are at a critical juncture; buy cialis tadalafil.Economically, I think we are at a critical juncture; buy cialis tadalafil.Internationally, we’ve got to make some big decisions not just for us for the next generation and we keep on putting it off; buy cialis tadalafil. Buy cialis tadalafil: and unfortunately, our politics is broken and Washington is so broken, that we can’t bring together people of goodwill to solve these common problems.I think I have the ability to build bridges across partisan lines, racial, regional lines to get people to work on some common sense solutions to critical issues and I hope that I have the opportunity to do that.

Obama’s election is a clear sign that a commitment to empathy and connection can help to win an election, especially at the national level.The most basic test of any candidate is whether people feel that he or she understands what ordinary folks go through on an ordinary basis.But the election is old news; buy cialis tadalafil.What’s fascinating now is to know that Obama seems to view empathy as a critical value not just for campaigning, but for governing.It’s been quite some time since we have seen a president so interested in what other people think or feel about issues buy cialis tadalafil, nor one so willing to find compromises that benefit the general public as much as is possible.Signs of the changes he believes are possible can be seen in the new Whitehouse website, which is fully searchable on Google, has a blog, and is full of simple declarative language about the agenda of the new administration.

More interesting is his fight to keep the BlackBerry that he carries with him at all times, constantly receiving and sending e-mail.Though the device is regarded as a security risk and a source of potentially embarrassing documents for the public record - buy cialis tadalafil.That’s all true, and Obama wants to hang on to it, because he feels that it’s one of a very few way he can remain connected:

“It’s just one tool among a number of tools that I’m trying to use, to break out of the bubble, to make sure that people can still reach me,” he told CNN.

“If I’m doing something stupid, somebody in Chicago can send me an e-mail and say, ‘What are you doing?’

“I want to be able to have voices, other than the people who are immediately working for me, be able to reach out and send me a message about what’s happening in America.”

It’s early days for President Obama; buy cialis tadalafil.Heck, it’s early day, full stop; buy cialis tadalafil.But his was the election that empathy built buy cialis tadalafil, perhaps even more so than the 1992 election we write about in Wired to Care.In the next four years, I hope we will all get to see what a presidency built on empathy can look like, and that we will all be better off four years from now than we are today - buy cialis tadalafil.