jenwebster

President Bush spent part of the day today at Fort Campbell, thanking the 10,000 soldiers who’ve returned in the last month or so for their service and for the opportunity to serve as their commander in chief.  At first, the image actually gave me chills and represented a rare bit of humility on the part of “the decider.”  However, I couldn’t help but remember how many Thanksgivings he has spent in Iraq or Afganistan.  Is it cynical or accurate to notice that he’s staying state-side now that he has no need for his political capital?  After so many years of deceit by this administration, I find myself having a hard time giving him the benefit of the doubt on this particular occasion.

Everyone’s favorite political parlor game lately is to guess Barack Obama’s choices for his cabinet positions.  When this man was running for president, we loved him because he promised a new brand of post-partisan politics.  He promised to reach across the aisle and embrace people like Hillary Clinton and John McCain.  He’s now proposed Clinton for Secretary of State (sort of) and reached out to McCain, exactly as he promised to.

What alarms me a little is that everyone seems upset.  The change that Barack Obama promised us was not to completely rebuild the wheel.  He promised to put politics aside for the good of the country.  And in line with that, he is choosing the people he feels are best qualified to help him lead this country.  Did we elect this man on a platform of change and then expect him to revert to partisan politics???  We trusted this man to lead us, voted for him at levels not seen in decades.  Is our trust in him so fleeting that we can’t believe he’ll make the best choices for this all-important war-time cabinet?

Everyone needs to sit back, take a deep breath and trust Obama.  With no checks and balances in the legislative branch, I for one am happy to see that there will be some voices of descent in the cabinet.