Mad Money Machine

Excitement Tomorrow?

Wow, people were really excited today. I must admit, I was getting caught up in the euphoria somewhat myself. I was mostly watching CNN but I also caught the streaming tweets at http://tweetgrid.com/inaug09. As you know, even though I have a Twitter account , I haven’t made much use of it yet. But lots of other people sure have. And when in their Twitter postings they type in a special tag "#inaug09" it helps other people find their tweets. That’s what tweetgrid does. You kinda sit there and watch people posting tweets in real time. Sometimes their links are pretty helpful. Several people post photos in real time. Others post links to major media stories. It was the first place I found out that whitehouse.gov got updated, for example.

But the thing that I got caught up in was the emotion, the joy, people were experiencing at the change of our Chief. They really believe things are going to be different and are going to be better. So far, I have to say they are right. The inauguration itself was indeed a spectacle. Good thing inaugurations aren’t held in June or there would have probably been ten million people trying to get down there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many JumboTrons. The media is just fawing over him. He is the rock star’s rock star. He is the Tiger Woods of presidents. BHO is the new JFK.

I believe that joy can be contagious. Like yawning. Like laughter. And with better than one half of our country experiencing sheer joy, maybe the other half can set aside their bitterness, sourness, or skepticism or whatever for a while and give this new executive branch a chance. Let’s see if Obama and his team push the pendulum toward liberty or toward tyranny. Let’s see if it is going to be  Austrianism or Keynesianism that gets the upper hand. Let’s see if government does indeed get better.

That’s one of the things I remember from his address. Don’t focus on whether government gets bigger or smaller. Focus on whether it gets better. He will evaluate the effectiveness of each org, and the ones that don’t cut the mustard get dropped. (That could turn out to be a whole lot of orgs!)

So my question is this: After the white tablecloths get balled up and sent to the laundry tonight, will there still be joy tomorrow? Will John Stewart get nasty every night toward this Chief? Or will there be some spirit of civility?  Will BHO really bring out the best of the politicians so that they work for us and not themselves? Or is this all just some audacity of hope?