Lucky to Have Him

Following Tuesday night's dinner with conservative columnists at the Maryland home of George Will, President-elect Obama met with liberal (and one libertarian) journalists in D.C. yesterday afternoon. Among the attendees: the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne and Eugene Robinson, National Journal's Ron Brownstein, the New York Times' Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, and conservative/libertarian Andrew Sullivan, of the Atlantic.

Sullivan, on that meeting:

It was totally off the record and I'm a stickler for those rules. I can say, however, the following: it's hard to express the relief I feel that this man will be the president soon. I realize that's what I feel above all else: relief.

I may disagree with him at times, and criticize him at times, but his great gift is showing that he does not expect people to change their convictions in order to find common areas of agreement. That's the challenge he's presenting all of us with, wherever we come from ideologically. The challenge is as real for a [Paul] Krugman as for a [Bill] Kristol, for Rick Warren as well as Gene Robinson.

As I've said repeatedly for the last two years, we're lucky to have him.

That is why I'm not going bat-shit stir-crazy over some of the appointments and decisions Obama has made. If you listened to his campaign rhetoric last year, then you should not be surprised in the least at how Mr. Obama is putting together a government.

Above all else, he wants competence to get things done; people who know what they're doing to clean up the carnage that will be left behind when Dubya and Dick leave office on Tuesday. From the campaign trail, the President-elect always said, from day one, that his goal was to find common ground with those on the opposite side of the political spectrum. For that is the only way anything of substance will get done. And after eight years of incompetence and over-reach, there's a backlog of substantial things that need doing.

So, my fellow progressives, disagree with our new president and criticize him when you feel the need, but know for certain that this guy will move this great country forward, return her to previous glory as the beacon of freedom around the globe, and end an era of Republican-Fascism that will be long remembered as the worst government in our history.