The Spirit of Democracy

[monk222]

The San Antonio Express-News runs the headline: A New World View in Washington. It hangs over a picture of a beaming Hillary with Obama at the State Department from their meeting yesterday, promising a much more invigorating diplomacy than we have known under Dubya.

Then I recalled Obama's first full day as president and the very first executive orders he signed, which were about making government more transparent, opening up information under the Freedom on Information Act, which had been strangled under Dubya. I don't think Hillary would have done that, but that she would have taken to the dark web of secrecy like a bat to a new cave.

I also saw a little bit of John McCain's interview with Larry King last night. And I mused how it would be if he had won the presidency, and how much more things would have stayed the same. And we would just accept that maybe this is the way it has to be in the adult world, that we need to be protected from some of the things that government has to do.

And I now see more clearly than ever how badly we needed Obama to win, this reawakening of faith in democracy - government of the people, by the people, for the people. It is only more poignant that it took a black president to remind Americans of this.

Comments

[antilapsarian.livejournal.com]

His first 24-48 hours in office was exactly what we elected him for. Which my dad grumbled about by saying, "it wasn't all that amazing to me." The guy isn't going to walk on water, but I made a list of the things Obama did in that first day and it was like a wish list building up over the last decade. All of the sudden we have good leadership again. No more, no less. It's just a decent guy in charge, but the refreshing character of that there is no way to express. He certainly has his critics, but a 78% approval rating means we're all fairly open to seeing where this ship gets steered right now.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I suppose it could be said that Dubya made it easy to look good, lol. We can see better how we were heading down a dark road - thank god for a new day!