A New President-Elect

The election is FINALLY over and Obama has won.  I'm as happy about that as I can be.  We need a new direction and a change from the Walking Disaster Area that is our current President.  

Since Iraq is 8 hours ahead of East Coast time, I got to miss almost all the talking heads that you had to put up with last night.  I turned on CNN this morning at 6 when I got up, and there was Anderson Cooper talking to a hologram of Will.I.Am.  I thought, what the hell can a hologram of an entertainer tell me about politics? Not a damn thing.  I hit the "off" button.  The blank screen is much more stimulating than Anderson Cooper.

I turned the TV on again an hour later and heard Wolf Blitzer make the announcement that CNN projected Obama as the winner.  What a way to start your day out!  I hit the "off" button again before Wolf could call up a hologram of Bart Simpson to tell us what it all meant.

Another hour later and I was at the Embassy getting my morning cappuccino.  They'd set up a screen and projector to show the election returns.  Obama was about to come out, so I stayed and watched his stirring, powerful speech.  The guy is one of the best orators I've ever heard.  His soaring rhetoric is such a wonderful contrast to the current Bumbler-In-Chief.  In some ways he reminds me of the way Clinton in his early days could get a crowd stirred, only Obama does it much better.

But winning the race and running the country are two very different things.  Obama has shown that he's smart, a good listener, and a quick learner.  He'll need all those traits with all the messes we're facing.  Iraq, a war in Afghanistan, a global economy in the pits, the worst deficits in history, a climate in crisis, our health care system a disaster, and who knows what trouble brewing that'll pop in the next six months.  Well, Barack, you wanted the job, you got it.

One thing that all Presidents have to learn at some point is that they will make decisions that will kill people.  Whether it's by deciding one way or another, or not deciding, some people will die because of what our President does.  Bill Clinton learned that in Somalia, and the lessons he learned affected the way we ran military operations in Bosnia.  George Bush Sr. learned it in World War II, and that affected how he ran Desert Storm.  Bush the Lesser ... well, some people are just a little slower than the rest of us.  

Obama hasn't faced that test yet.  I think he's got the steel in his backbone and the intelligence to handle it.  He's been very cautious so far, which is not necessarily a bad thing.  I'm pretty confident that when the shit hits the fan, he won't sit there with a deer-in-the-headlights look.  But it's coming, one way or another, because it's part of the job.  

But until then, let's celebrate.  This Ship of State's setting a new course!