Can you say President Obama?

As hard as it is for my Republican soul to swallow the concept of any Democrat in the White House, I must admit, I am hardly as distraught with the election of Senator Barak Hussein Obama as President of the United States as I was with the election of one William Jefferson Clinton 16 years ago.

In 1992 I was working on a US Congressional Campaign in Provo, Utah. My candidate was taking on a first term incumbent and we lost horribly. But our loss was hardly as public or even noticed when compared to the loss suffered by President George Herbert Walker Bush. At the time we thought all things holy had deserted us. There was talk that surely the Second Coming was not only eminent but probable to occur in the next four years (even then it was rumored that the Clintons would be the end of all moral fortitude in the nation).

What makes 2008 so different from 1992? For one thing Senator Obama is by all appearances a loyal husband and father. For another, I never did buy into the campaign of his opponent like I did in the campaign of Bush 41. To me, McCain will always be that bitter old man who swore at me on the Senate floor. There is no doubt that he was a war hero and deserves all respect for the sacrifices he has made for our country, but that doesn’t mean I would ever have been excited to see him in charge of the country. Bush 41 was different. He was a patriot in his own right and still had some of the mystique of the Great Reagan Administration. Sure he raised taxes, but he also hated broccoli and he never pushed forward an unconstitutional effort to stifle political speech through so called campaign finance reform.

I don’t expect much from an Obama Administration. He has a Democratic controlled House and Senate that, quite frankly, has only defined itself in the past two years by its opposition to Bush 43. Now the lowest rated Congress in the history of the United States will have no more excuses. It will be up to them to develop a positive agenda and deliver on the safety and economic needs of our nation.

Will they be up to the task? Only time will tell, but if past action is any indication of the future, I expect there will be a lot of room for the Republicans to pick up the pieces and pull themselves together .