An America I Can Get Behind

I'm happy. President Obama.

I love the sound of it. It's about time we had some true leadership. Sure, I'll take the Hope, Change, post-partisan stuff too. I'm just glad to have a true leader with intellect, world experience and a thoughtful, calm demeanor.

It's nice to have a president who wants to president of EVERYONE in the US. I even think he'd like to be president of the world if there was such a job and I think he'd do a great job.

Big surprise: I never voted for Bush. Any Bush, for that matter. I'm not much of an idealogue. I'm registered Green. Funny for so many reasons but mainly because I believe we need more of a third party to stir things up in the US. Too much same, same.

But this Barack guy. It's hard to overstate the impact he's had on our country and we are just in week two. He may fail, but at least he'll be honest about it. I think failure would be good for him, at first. It would just make this guy work harder. The last guy acted like he was just unlucky. 'Aw, shucks' ain't much of a leadership style. Plus, I'll say it again. He was dumb. Well-read, maybe, but D U M B, DUMB!

Sack o hammers dumb. Dumb like the US auto industry. They fight success every bit of the way ('Stop trying to make us competitive! We are the US Auto Industry, dammit!')

So anywho... We took the kids down for the inauguration. We watched it from the Lincoln side of the Washington Monument. It worked out perfectly for us. We left Joel's house at around 10am and were in-place, watching the scene at 11:10am. Not bad. That included riding down 16th St with Kemler, Susan, the kids and Dean. Our kids were in the trailer (for ease of transportation) and Dean rode his bike.

We hit the WABA bike valet parking on 16th, right next to my old digs at the League offices. After collecting our commemorative spoke cards, we marched with a few thousand friends down to 20th St, then down to the Mall. Snacks, snuggling and waiting.

Aretha was my favorite. She brought tears to my eyes. And that hat! I have a new-found love and respect for that woman. What a great choice. That Williams piece of music was stirring, to say the least. Perfect.

Hearing Barack flub the oath (thanks CJ Roberts) was perfect. Here's a guy on his biggest day and he has to laugh off a mistake that wasn't his fault. The oath is just the oath, after all, right? Why stress out? The hard part starts immediately afterwards.

By the way: good luck with that. We'll be here. Watching. Hoping.

This is the America I have been waiting for. Just when we go and screw things up with getting Osama bin Laden, screw up Iraq, threaten Iran and S Korea, torpedo the stock market AND banking system AND US economy, we go and show the world what Americans do when it hits the fan: we elect the RIGHT person to fix it all. Somebody who will make us better than we think we should be. Somebody who understands more than any one of us could but not more than all of us together.

Together.

It will be nice having somebody at the top, leading the free world, pulling us together. I'm tired of Bush/Cheney. The world joins me in that.

'The Angler' won a Pulitzer. Bob Woodward published a great article in the WaPo here.

And on a personal note, Obama inspired me to better myself. I'm hoping to help out by the second term. I re-enrolled in graduate school to get a Master's in Public Administration. Wish me luck.