Mr. Right

My daughter recently changed the background screen on my computer, which usually means she replaces one of the pictures I take on my summer hikes in the back country of the Sierra Mountains with her favorite subject, herself. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s hard to resist a background screen with my beautiful sunshine girl smiling back at me, but eventually I go back to my shots of 14,000 foot snow capped mountain peaks, because after all I get to see Chloe’s angelic face every day, and I only get up to the back country once a year. But recently she changed the background screen and the subject was not her, but our new president, it was a photo of Barack Obama I downloaded recently to send to my wife, who is similarly smitten, and Chloe must have found it in my files and put it up.

It is a picture of Obama in a workman like cotton plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up, seemingly in motion while giving a speech, it shows him in a side profile but his face is clearly visible and he has the look of a man on a mission. I think I’m going to leave this one for awhile, because it serves as both a reminder to myself, and to anyone else at the coffee house who might glance at my background screen, which is what I leave up while I am up ordering more coffee or outside having my morning phone conversation with my wife Julie. It’s better than leaving my Facebook page open and having a snooping passerby see that Mark is now standing up to stretch and Jason Sasaki is rooting for the Lakers and somebody I vaguely know is posting a picture of someone else that I don’t know at all, if you know Facebook you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about, if you don’t, don’t worry about it, seriously it’s a heck of a time waster.

But back to the point of my little ditty this morning, and that is the fact that we, and by we I’m referring to the tens of millions of voters and those too young to do so but who would have if they could have voted, we got it right! After two straight elections where we put a complete imbecile in office, the majority of American voters finally shook off their inclination to vote for the guy who promises merely to keep their taxes low and shoot up all the bad guys and cast their lot with an intelligent, articulate, and inspiring leader of people. And not only that, but we voted for a guy who is half black in a nation that still has many more racial hang-ups than we’d care to admit. But the point is that we finally got one right, and not a moment too soon, Obama is Mr. Right when it comes to the presidency, and as a man he’s no slouch either, I think I am developing a bit of a man crush, so I have to admit that my wife and daughter aren’t the only ones who are smitten. If he were in a movie, he would be akin to watching Brad Pitt, Heath Ledger, or Denzel Washington on the screen, or the young Sean Connery from the old Bond movies, they are just really cool and they make you want to be cool too.

On a more serious note, Obama is the right guy for the job for more reasons than his coolness, his style, his good looks, and all the other Kennedyesque qualities he possesses, minus the funny Boston accent. He is someone who really seems to get it, who seems to understand the enormity of the task he has taken on, and who possesses the skill and wit and judgment to get the job done. Judgment in a president, it gives me goose bumps just thinking about it. Bill Clinton had some of these qualities, but he was also a pudgy pasty lyin’ cheatin’ bastard, and it’s hard to admire someone like that. Bush to his credit keeps himself fit and does look good in a suit, but his presidency has been an unqualified disaster. Seeing Bush out of office reminds me of when the Dodgers traded Tom Niedenfeur, a relief pitcher notorious for blowing games in the late innings. Just the sight of him in another uniform gave me a cozy feeling, knowing that he was now blowing games for some other poor suckers and their team.

There are numerous difficult and complex issues that Obama has to deal with, starting with a serious economic recession, two Asian wars with a combined death toll approaching 5000, a national debt that has surpassed $10 trillion, and the myriad of domestic and foreign policy issues that are currently out there, not to mention the ones that will arise. The temptation will be to judge him quickly and harshly, and no doubt this will happen both from the right and the left. Talk-radio and the so-called blogosphere will be abuzz with broken campaign promises and every imaginable misstep that our guy makes. But I am hoping that I will not be one of them, even though I will certainly disagree with some decisions that he will make along the way. I am going to try to practice what I preach, which is the virtue of patience, and let the man do his job, the job that I and many others elected him to do. I will do my utmost to withhold judgment until enough time has passed to assess the situation we are in as a nation and as a society, and to determine how our new president’s policies have impacted that situation.

The next election isn’t for nearly another four years, so I propose we all take a deep breath, and sit back and see what happens. We might just find that life is more enjoyable when we are not constantly in hyper-vigilant electoral mode, and we very well may be pleased with the results once we do finally make our minds up as to the merits of an Obama presidency. In the meantime, I’ll keep my screen saver up, at least until I get a serious jones for those snow capped peaks, or until Chloe decides that the newest picture of herself is just too damn cute not to put up there.