By the time you read this, Barack Hussein Obama should be sworn in as our nation's 44th President.
It's interesting to think back eight years about the last time we made a transition such as this one and recall some of the differences.
The last time we did this, I don't recall the fawning coverage of every move George W. Bush made. Perhaps I look at this through the lens of partisanship, but there were a lot of people in the "selected not elected" crowd who got the headlines.
Because of the Florida vote controversy, President Bush had a much shorter transition period. But I don't believe any of his Cabinet picks had the baggage associated with three of Obama's: Bill Richardson, Timothy Geithner, and Hillary Clinton. Nor does this account for the shenanigans associated with filling Obama's vacated Senate seat. President Bush had the natural advantage of already having a successor in place when he left the Governorship of Texas to assume the Presidency.
Much was made in the early weeks of George W. Bush's term about the "new tone" of non-partisanship, and the truce of sorts even held through the tragedy of 9/11 - who could forget the assembled Congress singing "God Bless America"?
While it's the hope of all of us that President Obama doesn't have to face such an attack on any day during his term, the question remains about how much he'll work with the Republicans - unlike Bush, Obama has more of a solid majority of his party in both houses of Congress.
The way I look at it, those inside the Beltway and who cover that beat in the media are quickly abandoning the "new tone" for that same old song. Generally over the last several decades Democrats have thoroughly been in power and for them it's back to the normalcy they've craved over the last 14 years.
I find it very interesting that even before the man has taken the Oath of Office, we already have a proposal to repeal the 22nd Amendment. This didn't come up in the 110th Congress, but had in the previous three.
Our nation went through a lot over the last eight years, most pointedly a Long War against Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. While President Clinton touted the "peace dividend" that he inherited from his two Republican predecessors (who subdued the Soviet Union and helped to free several Eastern European nations from its orbit), President Obama (and likely his successors) will still be faced with this threat from the forces of radical Islam.
That's not to say that President Bush stood idly by and did nothing; he instead chose to take the fight to them. Initially he had the support of our nation, but much like Vietnam the Fourth Estate led the effort to siphon off public support and eventually whittled it away enough to make even successes look like failures.
So now we have President Obama. I didn't vote for the guy, but then again I've never voted for a Democrat for President and he certainly gave me no reason to switch over. (On the other hand, the Republican gave me plenty of reasons to stay home, but I held my nose and voted for him anyway.)
For the sake of our national security, I wish him the best of luck.
But for the sake of our Republic, my fervent hope is that he gets little of his agenda accomplished and that America wises up and returns to its onetime distrust of an ever-expanding, more intrusive government.
In short, let's hope Barack Obama is a flash in the pan, one-term President, remembered only for trying but failing to make America into a socialist paradise. May the history books someday peg the beginning of his term as another Great Awakening, one that restores the vision Ronald Reagan had of America as a shining city on a hill and beacon of freedom.