Unlike a letdown that may come, say, post-Christmas, the day after America shows the rest of the world we're not all assholes, the sensibility carries with it a fairly euphoric hangover. "Yes We Can!" "Hope!" "Change!" -- lovely buzzwords they. Following up is akin to having to maintain success, which is decidedly more difficult than achieving it. Of course one cannot maintain what one has yet to achieve, so one step at a time -- hey?
The elements apparently approve, the day is a hazy, 60-something, temperate experience, facilitating the buzz and making for a pleasant drive to the Y and a swim.
Of course, one cannot ignore the walking malignancy still in the White House endeavoring to metastasize itself by way of further deregulation of environmental and consumer safeguards (and so little time!!) and utterly ignoring how its presence made necessary an Obama presidency -- the will of the American people to the contrary be damned.
Meanwhile, I'm under little illusion as to the corporate-friendly policies this new president will implement (Rahm Emanuel as COS? Hello!?), but it is also apparent that he is aware he has to actually effect "change" to the old way of doing business. Economic stimulus: infrastructure and universal healthcare for starters; this new president, at the very least, knows that government has a much greater roll -- not bigger, necessarily, but certainly better. And that means re-regulation on a massive scale.
I suspect it'll take at least his entire first term, and likely well into his second, to fix what Dubya broke.
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Update: Ol' Morning Sickness has his rightist probs w/Emanuel too. Then it dawned: Of course, Emanuel is the ultimate behind-the-scenes triangulator, which means Obama is planning to stick it to both sides. Oy!
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