Now the questions begin

Well, I guess I put it off long enough. Then again, with scores of other writers and journalists weighing in on Tuesday's historic elections in today's Sunday newspapers, it's not like I'm waiting until February to really get started on dissecting Sen. Barack Obama's rise to become the President-elect of the United States.

It's fairly obvious to see how Obama won this election. Organization, fund-raising, staying on message, and avoiding the destructive attack tone of campaigning were points of order the Obama team clearly understood better than the slipshod McCain team. From the selection of an utterly unqualified and borderline incompetent running mate, to a stubborn insistence on attacking personal associations that McCain himself was just as close to, the Republicans could not have done a better job of laying down in the road as rush hour was beginning. The party's collapse into chaos has been striking, and more than a little fun to watch, as I haven't seen this much feeding upon itself than the time the four cannibals got caught at a REALLY long red light. If Sarah Palin is really being touted as the new face of the GOP, expect a lot more of the same four years from now. Whackjob, which is closer than most people understand, was more generous than I would have been, and is a lot more generous than I have, in fact been.

As for our new President-elect, the critics, bloggers, and journalists have been quick to start questioning whether or not change is really coming. Come on, people...it took a grand total of three days for me to see a commercial touting a Barack Obama commemorative coin. Made me wonder how many John McCain coins that company had to melt down on Wednesday morning, and how appropriate a term is melt down, considering how the last five or six weeks of the McCain-Palin, or Palin-Voices in her head campaigns went.

Granted, I can admit to a little skepticism. Some of the financial all-star team advising Obama throughout the campaign were already more than a little suspect, given their past roles in the deregulation of the financial industries that played a large part in getting us to the state we're in now. Paul Volcker? Robert Rubin? Larry freakin' Summers? I cannot argue against bringing in people with experience, but sometimes you simply need to hire new guards to work the room, not the guys who helped case the joint in the first place.

Much was made of President-elect Obama's first press conference last week, in which there was some fluff material about the selection of the new dog (or dogs, possibly) for the Obama children, and a humorous moment when Obama made an offhand joke about the reputed fondness for seances by former first lady Nancy Reagan, which Obama later said he called and apologized for. Me personally, I would not have done that. Not that I am entirely an unapologetic person, but let's get serious people, seances? I notice none of them included getting in touch with her husband's mind, after it went off to the great unknown during his second term.

As the first full week of the Obama-elect era winds down, I do find it promising that his transition advisers have compiled a substantial list of Bush administration moves that could be reversed, overturned, or simply tossed on the leaf fire out back. Key on this list are matters involving climate change, stem cell research, and reproductive rights. While I'm sure the religious nutcake factions of the right-wing are wringing hands, gnashing and weeping, and maybe even going to the Florida extent of praying and fasting on courthouse steps (we all saw how well that worked for those nimrods, in their hopes of getting an abortion opponent in the White House), the crucial matter is climate change. Anything our next president does in that neighborhood should start with tackling a repeal of the Clear Skies Act, and working with Congress to overturn the rollbacks enacted on the Clean Air Act.

I congratulate our new President, and I sincerely wish him the best of luck in the pursuit of his agenda, as most anything would be an improvement on the last eight years, just so long as he doesn't allow the ghosts of administrations past to whisper too loudly in his ear. We the people apparently craved change, as evidenced by the vote (for the record, I voted for neither Obama or McCain), but the bottom line for your next four years will be how you tread the very fine line between change we can believe in and just more of the business-as-usual politics this country settled for throughout this decade.