Maybe it’s cheesy to quibble with President Obama’s inauguration speech while we’re still basking in the afterglow—especially with one of its most gratifying lines. But here’s an edit I think he’d appreciate—a one-word addition that would have done even more to restore America’s standing in the world, and one that happens to speak especially to this city.

It was probably courageous, maybe canny, and certainly historic for Obama to declare, “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers.” Jaws (including mine) dropped and commentators went agog to hear an American president acknowledge the existence of godless fellow Americans—and even salute them as a part of the “patchwork heritage” that is “a strength, not a weakness.” It’s nearly as bracing to see that no one blinked at including Muslims and Hindus.

But think how much better that line would have scanned if he’d said “a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, Buddhists and non-believers.” Better meter, more consistent parallelism, a bit of B-B alliteration, and the nonbelievers wouldn’t have been left hanging out there alone.

More important, Obama would have acknowledged one of the world’s four mega- (i.e., billion-member) religions, one that’s growing much faster in this country than the general population.

Sure it would be good to also acknowledge the Wiccans, pagans, Baha’ists, Zoroastrians, practitioners of Native American religions, even acolytes of the Green Spaghetti Monster. Perhaps future presidents will recite a much longer list. However long, it won’t be long enough to cover everyone. You gotta draw the line somewhere.

Buddhists have clearly crossed the threshold. More than a million-and-a-half American adults identify themselves as Buddhist, according to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Politics. That’s as many as the members of “Unitarian and other liberal faiths,” nearly half as many as the cohort of atheists (or at least of those who’ve come out), and more than the numbers of Muslims, Hindus, Orthodox Christians, Conservative or Orthodox Jews, New Agers, and Native American practitioners. Richard Gere, you are not alone.

The share of Buddhists in and around Seattle, with its large Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, and Tibetan populations, is doubtless much larger than the national average. (Not to mention all the spiritual seekers who dabble in various Buddhist disciplines and studies.) You’ll find out how numerous and vigorous one local Buddhist community, the Vietnamese, is if you try to through the jam around the Chua Co Lam temple this Tet (new year) weekend.

But even here, Buddhists are a shadow minority. Fifteen years ago, a monk complained to me that he could not get into Harborview hospital to minister to Buddhist patients; Christian chaplains visited them instead. I presume that’s changed, though I haven’t checked. President Obama could have helped advance that change. Maybe he will in four years.

And for the record, I’m not a Buddhist. Obama included my ilk in his list.