Obama Fever Still Makes Some Break Out in a Rash

Yes, I am so very excited about Obama! After voting, I walked the two blocks home and passed by several people who couldn't contain the urge to beam at me-- a perfect stranger!

Someday I will probably regret not going to see Obama speak in Grant Park. Perhaps living in Chicago is something I take for granted. I did meet him once before his bid for the presidency. He's truly a magical figure whose affect on people is like something out of a fable. I was working the coat room for a fundraiser at the Field Museum. Out of all the celebrities and high rollers in attendance, he was the one person there who everyone rushed over to meet. As he shook my hand, people gushed about how much he inspired them. Looking back, it was all pretty incredible.

At the time, I lived in the same Chicago neighborhood, Hyde Park, as he did-- which is such an amazing cross-section of the whole country. It seems quite apt that Obama makes his home there. After seeing gang signs and drug deals on one street, you walk a few blocks over and find the University of Chicago, with its stately gothic architecture and respected multi-nobel prize winning faculty. Another few blocks away you'll see a paddy wagon waiting outside a high school for the inevitable lunchtime crimes stemming from the fact that it has no cafeteria. Still another few blocks and you'll find rows of historic and gated mansions. Hyde Park's discrepant population certainly makes for an interesting living environment. I can't help but wonder if Obama's experience there accounts for some of his so-called "socialist" tendencies. What is more maddening than looking out your window and seeing a Mercedes drive by one minute and a shooting the next? Like the rest of the nation, Hyde Park is such an amazing place, but so many-- mostly because of socio-economic circumstances-- live at the bottom. Greenspan himself seems less than enthusiastic about capitalism these days, at least in its present laissez-faire form. Wealth has a funny way of refusing to trickle down.

Obama has more than just these social issues to overcome. With so much optimism abounding, it's easy to forget about the nearly half of the country who didn't vote for him, electoral votes aside. My mother, included. I haven't talked to her since the election. Honestly, I don't even want to address it. She stunningly still believes in Bush's competence and ability to run this country. And she's not even an idiot! As a nation, we are able to empirically remember George Washington and Abe Lincoln as good presidents, due in part, I'm sure to nostalgia and propoganda. It seems as time passes, though, that the quality of a president becomes less and less fact and more partisan opinion. I hope for everyone's sake this ceases to be the rule and four years from now, we can all-- more or less-- have confidence and pride in the guy in charge, despite attempts to rake him through the mud.

I hear Obama's team is already planning on how to overturn many of the policies enacted by the Bush administration during his first few months in office. Like hitting the reset button on an eight-year oopsie. Let's hope it indeed happens, and it's enough to get people like my mother on board the O-Train... I've saved the seat next to me.