In 15 days, the Capitol city will be thronged with the passionate, the adoring, the hopeful, a few of the hateful and the just plain curious.
Count me in the latter. I don’t think I’ve got the stomach to fight the Inauguration Day crowds — but I’ll be watching the ceremonies.
And then watching the Obama presidency.
Frankly, I’m intrigued so far. Obama has an impressive PR team. Clinton brought in a lot of outsiders. Obama’s bringing Clinton (and other) insiders. He has the most liberal voting record in the Senate. I couldn’t disagree more with his votes on controversial issues. But, he has also picked up some “legacy initiatives.” He co-sponsored an open government to put all of the government’s expenditures online in a search able format. people said it couldn’t be done, but it was done (and Sen. Cuccinelli co-sponsored a similar – unsuccessful – bill for Virginia). Obama’s indicated a flexibility on major initiatives that indicates he may be more concerned with having a popular presidency than an ideological one. His energy policy changed on the campaign trail. So did his Iraq policy. Now, he’s gone from talking about eliminating the Bush tax cuts to merely letting them expire to proposing a $300 billion tax cut of his own.
I rather suspect Obama will shelve the extreme social agenda of his base and concentrate on fixing the economy. His plan for the economy will take us closer to socialism and I’ll disagree with it. But, honestly, how much better would McCain have been on that score? Given his response to the first bailout plan, I’m not sure he would behave any more conservatively than Obama or “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system,” Bush.
Sound off on your predictions for the first six months of Obama – and how they’ll affect this year’s Virginia elections. I’m really curious about that.