Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Hail To The New Chief


God Bless our President Elect. 

Well, now we get to find out whether he is a socialist ideologue who has been plotting to “change” the best most productive country in the world to something less or just a canny politician who was, as an ambitious young man, able to grab the greasy rope net of affirmative action, clamber aboard the radical socialist pirate ship, rise to prominence among the America-haters and demagogues of the welfare state and, from there swing himself onto the deck of our ship of state ready to change into the uniform of and abide by the constitution of The United States of America. Count me as one of the ones who was, and still is, skeptical. I was certainly against giving him the opportunity to prove himself in this way; but if he turns out to be the latter, I confess I will be sorely tempted to forgive him his methods and wink at his pluck. 

This is a particularly bad time for us to be taking this risk but he has the presidential seal now and he is my president. I take whatever cheer I can from the hope that he is not the ideologue but the ambitious politician and will, as others have in the past, be transformed by the grandeur of the office and the vitality of the constitution, which defines its powers and responsibilities.

As an American, I honor that constitution and the office. I wish Barack Obama well in assuming it. Americans are also called upon by our system to be vigilant and vocal and I intend to fulfill that duty too. 

There are some things that are unalloyed good about this. Chief among them is that we have proven once again that, without question, this is the greatest land of opportunity on earth. As much as I regret what I perceive to be the character of the man and dislike his policies and despise so many of his friends and supporters, I can’t help but have a deep pride that he has been able to become the most powerful man in the world as a black man in America. 

The other really good thing is that, if he is just a canny politician, the leftist radicals he used on his way up are in a no-win situation. If he lives up to the demands of the office, they will have lost what might be their only opportunity to have their kind of “change” in this century. If he doesn’t, I have faith that our system will flush him out the way it did Jimmy Carter and it will be a very long time before the American public trusts another candidate with those kinds of friends and associates again.