'This Week' Inauguration Voices

Jan. 17, 2009 — -- Paul Bucha, highly decorated American Vietnam War veteran and foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign

"I believe when President-elect Obama puts his hand on that bible on Jan 20th, that moment, that instant before a word is uttered, the opinion of America and our image around the world will change for the better instantaneously.

"I think Senator Obama, his wife and family becoming our elected first family, is what's special and I think we'll start saying he's not African American, he's American, as he always reminds me.

"In many ways he's like the rest of us, he's not pure he's like a mosaic. This is a special place, ordinary people can achieve extraordinary things without regard to ethnicity or family or title or wealth. I just find it absolutely amazing the challenges we're facing but the promise penetrates that cloud and the optimism of the nation will prevail. And that's what's essential for us to succeed. If we go into this dour and pessimistic, we won't succeed. But I think on January 20th the optimism of the nation will prevail."

Ernest Green, one of the Little Rock Nine high school students

"My hope is that he will be very successful and I would love to see Barack Obama be a president that people will think of in the likes of Lincoln and Washington and Roosevelt. That he goes to the pantheon of American presidents."

John Harrison Jr., Tuskegee Airman

"I'm honored. I'm honored. I can't find words to express it properly. To be there, and to have one of my children, my daughter, with me at this great occasion, it fills me with a deep sense of gratitude and honor, and I'm glad to be an American in this day of age and see this happen. I really can't find the adequate words to describe it. I'm filled with emotion. I get to be an emotional person at various times, and this just fills me with emotion."

Elizabeth Alexander, Poet

"I always try to keep my ears open in the spirit of Walt Whitman when he talks about 'I hear America singing,' he talks about the varied carols of America. This was the mid-19th century. And today that is still true, listening to all those different voices under the American umbrella of American english, I think, a way of thinking about the wonderful diversity that can carry us forward."