My President, Barak Obama

Tuesday was a wonderful culmination of dreams and hopes for our family. We are a political group. I married my husband, in fact, because the first time we went for coffee, he spoke so eloquently and interestingly on world affairs. And that vocabulary! Don't get me started. I knew from that evening in the Village over capuccino, that I would one day marry that man.

And now we have a passel of kids who were given exposure to newspapers, political discussions and current events with their Gerber peas and carrots. No small wonder then, that we all waited for the inauguration. I first spotted Barak Obama at the DNC in 2004 when he gave the keynote address. I knew then, that he was destined for greatness. I turned to Honey and said, "Okay, how soon can he run for president? He's it."

And now he is indeed  it. Leader for the United States, Leader of the Free World, Grand Poobah, the Great Kahuna. Wow. And he has inherited a pile of problems both internationally and nationally. It is a perilous time in the world and we are in the middle of an economic meltdown the like of which has not been seen in our lifetimes.

But the thing is, he can inspire people. Even people who didn't vote for him are willing to follow him because he is a leader. He has the indefinable specialness. Charisma. But more than that, President Obama is smart. He is a thinker. (Whoa. We haven't seen that in a while, have we?) The man not only reads books, he writes them. He is a scholar. He wants to build bridges with the world, not just bomb it. And he can accomplish so much not by doing it himself, but by inspiring each one of us to make it all happen.

I am a religious person and I have been praying fervently that God gives President Obama the guidance to make the right choices for our world because surely the things we do as a nation impact for good or evil what happens on the rest of the planet. I pray God protects him and his beautiful family. I pray that President Obama leads us into a brighter future using green technology that preserves the earth, leads us to creation of more good jobs, leads us out of our morass of selfishness and me-firstism, leads us to be the best we can be and to share our wealth with all God's creatures.

I don't know how any one person can live up to all the expectations put upon this man, but I pray God makes it possible, because now more than ever we need a great leader and President Obama may well be the one.