Changes I Can Believe In

So, Obama takes the Presidency tomorrow. The press is burying themselves in the racial history, and the demise of the Republican party. Those things are great, but everyone's talking about them, so I won't belabor those points further.

What I'm interested in are not one, but three changes that occur tomorrow.

First, a Senator assumes the White House. The last to do so was JFK. I won't say that governors and those from the executive branch make bad president's, but under the circumstances, a senator might do us well. Obama will have insight when dealing with Congress from the fact that he's been there, it might prevent some of the branch-branch fights we've seen in the past. It also means he's been in town and knows the people working with him. He doesn't need time to get used to Joe Biden, or get to know Hillary Clinton.

Second, someone who has grown up in urban settings is taking the Oval Office. You have to go back nearly a century in Presidential history to find a commander-in-chief with a city background. Obama's smallest place of residence was Honolulu, at 300,000 people. Other cities have included Jakarta, Chicago and New York. Given how the majority of Americans live in cities of 50,000+, we now have a leader who understands our lives and settings.

Third, and perhaps most important, Barack Obama is not a baby boomer. I don't know what to call his generation. I don't even know if he's of my generation. I don't care. I just know he doesn't seem to carry the me me me spend money attitude of the 80's. That attitude got adopted by Washington and the nation as a whole as we used anything we could for credit and spent money we didn't have as much as we could. And thanks to Medicare and Social Security, Boomers will finance their retirement and health care at the expense of the younger generations.

Barack Obama has made some money for himself, but he's not filthy stinking rich off of oil money. He, like Clinton, might just actually care what kind of world he leaves his offspring.