Will President Obama "preserve, protect and defend"?

Can a leopard change its spots? As blogfriend Gayle Miller of And you thought YOU were cranky says in the comments of our previous post, "The presidency has often been a transformative experience — we can only pray most humbly that this is true in the case of the man who will take office on 1/20/09." Or if you're a cat, like Tiny above, you can stare at things we don't see.

"The Clintons really won't be going back to the White House," The Boston Globe's in-house, voice-in-the-wilderness conservative Jeff Jacoby reminds us, trying to cheer up even a "red voter in the bluest of states" like ourselves with a list of soothing post-election "reasons for some solace":

We haven't seen the last of Sarah Palin, who demonstrated star power as she withstood with aplomb and good humor a vicious assault from the left. [Our "everything happens for a reason" impulse tells us John McCain was put on this earth to launch the Alaska Governor into the political stratosphere.]

Government financing of political campaigns, always a dreadful idea, is dead [Who's sorry now?] …

A turn in the wilderness will do Republicans good [That's what happens when you let the intellectual restlessness of your early years give way to decadent complacency] …

Ah. We feel better already. "But the most lustrous silver lining of all is the racial one," concludes Jacoby:

As a politician and policymaker, Obama distresses me; his extreme liberalism is not what the nation needs. But as a symbol — a son of Africa elected to lead a majority-white nation that once enslaved Africans and treated their descendants with great cruelty — Obama's rise makes me proud of my country. The anthem of the Civil Rights Movement was "We Shall Overcome." Impossible as it might have seemed scant decades ago, we have.

Lovely thoughts, but is a symbol enough? Will President Barack Obama leave the Marx-lite philosophy and thuggish Chicago-style political tactics of his youth behind and rise to the challenge when he solemnly swears "I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States so help me God" on Inauguration Day? We guess it depends upon what your definition of "to the best of my ability" is.

Comments

[Gayle Miller]

His hubris will be at least a bit restrained I think by the intense scrutiny of the "new media" and by the fact that, thank heavens, the Dems did not get the super-majority they sought in the Senate! In the meantime, the solemn gaze of the beauteous Tiny makes all of the angst of this historic day somehow more bearable.

You may all commence jealousy incidentally. In my office we will have a 4-day weekend. Monday the 19th is a Federal holiday (Martin Luther King's remembrance day) and then, quite fittingly, the Inauguration will occur on Tuesday the 20th! In D.C. it is required that all office buildings be closed on Inauguration Day. I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to that 4 days off!

If Senator Obama has accomplished nothing else, he has driven the last nail into the coffin of the Clinton presidency!

[goomp]

Kate Smith sang "God Bless America." I sing God help America.

[retrorepublican]

This leopard will not change his stripes: his early job offer of Chief of Staff has already shown that; the fact that he has a Chicago Daley on his transition team simply reinforces the knowledge that old school liberalism will prevail for the next four years. After eight years of Republican leadership, the leftist illuminati will flex their muscles.

My concerns are mostly about the social issues this will effect - assisted suicide, abortion legislation - more even than the inevitable rise of an even bigger government.

America was founded to establish democracy instead of monarchy. But bureaucracy has replaced the crown.