I don't know much about politics, but I would imagine neither unabashed liberalism OR conservatism would be ideal.

In the end, I think everyone is approaching this change-over and, to that end, Obama's election differently. I have no expectations, aside from the fact that I am fairly certain my uterus is safe from government hands for a bit.

Otherwise I have no idea what will happen. I just hope I don't lose my job to this economic clusterfuck.

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I do get a little bit irritated that Clinton was slammed so hard in the primaries for being an Old School DC Insider, but I also realize that this is politics. I just hope that a lot of people finally see that Obama is not some wizard with a magic wand. He is a politician and I hope he will simply do the best he can do given the circumstances and parameters.

Also, the fact that he has a Democratic majority in both houses should be interesting. Clinton did not have that. And, I highly doubt Obama will receive the same level of outlandish witch-hunting that the Clintons had to deal with. Not at first, at least.

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Or maybe I am just cynical.

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I agree with everything you said, and everything you said well, I might add. I hated the way HRC was criticized in the primaries, especially in light of the fact that Obama is appointing people that her husband basically trained. I'm not hugely upset by it, in fact I think it's smart, but if people had known that Obama was simply filling a cabinet with Clintonistas, they may have just elected a Clinton to lead them. But no matter. This is probably my cynical side talking, but let's see how the MSM feels about Obama in 20 years.

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1. Regarding "unabashed liberalism": well, liberal means lots of things to many people, so I'm going to set that word aside for a moment. I don't mean that in a stupid, centrist, Third Way kind of way, by the by. I just mean that to the extent "liberalism" means "partisanism" then yes, it's stupid, so let's ignore stupid for the purposes of this response.

2. Regarding "change": so here is what would be a change that I see people actually longing for - government that is both principled and grounded in reality. In Clinton we got a lot of reality without identifiable principles a lot of the time; in Bush we got a lot of principle (the wrong ones) with absolutely no reality allowed. As for other kinds of "change," I, like Archetype, found Obama to be a little vague. I mean, change can mean anything. And frankly, so far it seems to mean very little, not least because most of the faces and influential figures in the Administration are familiar insofar as they're mostly Clinton folk.

3. I'm not really saying this in an insider/outsider sense. I don't much care for that distinction either. What worries me more is that there are plenty of intellectually qualified people in this country as regards the economy - and we seem to be getting led by a bunch of people who have not only been around this block before, but were, and this is a sad truth, partially responsible for getting us here. I know people like to blame Bush, but this "free market revolution" stretches back far before him, and Clinton did not much help matters.

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But all this about who means what is just pure speculation. Sure, you can glean certain things about people from previous leadership styles. But we won't know if Obama, for example, means to pursue UHC until he announces it. This endless "presenting of theories as facts" is becoming infuriating. Even KO/RM has been guilty of it as of late.

Obama has demonstrated himself to be keen on surrounding himself with experts and doing what makes sense. And it seems that the tone is DC has been changed, that folks are getting the message that the partisan way of doing business will not continue for long.

What really pisses me off is Bush taking a back-seat and letting Obama lead the way. Bush seems to be relishing his "lamest or lame duck Presidents" role. My guess is he and Cheney are too busy shredding files to pay attention.

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Well, I'd argue that the disenchantment was with Clinton's 'morality' (or lack thereof), and the rise of Bush: the sequel. If memory serves, Bush won the character debate and therefore the election. Bill Clinton was fresh off Lewinski and an impeachment trial. The main theme of the Bush campaign was "I've got morals because I got Jesus." Despite the fact that Clinton ushered in an era of properity, left the budget with a surplus, and had a high approval rating... Bush won the "morality" vote.

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That's a bailout I could get behind. And it's about 1/10000000th of the cost of these crazy bailouts. It makes me feel like I am in possession of Monopoly money.

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He'd be known as "The Pickle Man".

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OH! NPR told me this afternoon that the Council of Economic Advisers is expert economy-types (who advise, shockingly enough.) The Economic Council is actually high ranking members of each branch of government who come together to synch econ. policy. (It's similar to the National Security Council.)

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(Plus, you sound pretty psyched to know the answer, and I am now psyched for us both!)

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Oh wait, you said 7, not 27.

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