The left of my party represents a severe danger in that, like the crazy right, they bring to the table buzz words, catholic rites of passage and a set of litmus tests to every discussion. They press issues with a view that is backward looking, walking into the future backwards.

The media (Campbell Brown for instance...and I love her dearly as a journalist) needs also to reconsider the nature of its pressing of Obama. I, for one, am very fatigued by the continual shift of focus back to the primary (American Elections are a different creature than American ruling both for rhetoric and for energetic nastiness). I don't need to be reminded about what Hillary said or Barack said on the stump or even whether a President Obama can keep the "promises" he put forward during the campaign. (He has already firmly addressed the issue that priorities will have to be set and some things he would prefer be deferred. To insist that meeting present crises with his present team involves reshoveling stuff that recent events have made irrelevant is to engage in the easiest and worst of Journalism.

I want Barack Obama's backside watched with an eye to the finest detail (a thing that the Media, in its least Edward R. Murrow fashion, failed us in whilst they were scared of taking on anything like the Religious, fanatic and Conservative actions that has now so deeply mired and muddled our nation. Then it was the spreading of platitudes that dominated and surrounded us which let Cheney, Bush, Rove and Rummy rule and ruin.
Focusing again upon platitudes, upon well rehashed issues like Hillary Clinton, upon supposed promises made to the liberals of my party and the past, in general, does not fulfill the mission of journalism to focus on the acts of the new president. He is more than willing to stand by his decisions and actions and defend these. We can do better by him to question his actions with as much decision and depth. I'm sure the course of his presidency would benefit by criticism soundly offered.

I have watched the election closely since day one and have listened to Barack Obama position himself broadly in the Democratic Political spectrum. I have read all of his writing as well as his teachings on constitutional law and have concluded that he respects the abilities of persons to act decisively and in creating the broadest arena for action to unfold. Thus I am not troubled by his keeping the Secretary of Defense or appointing Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. In this regard I am reminded that FDR was once told he was wrong-headed by Marshall when Marshall was a quite low level military figure. When the time came to appoint the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Roosevelt reached deep into the list provided him and chose George C. Marshall, a man whose views, politics and person was often at odds with those of FDR himself. In that selection a long series of significant and far reaching decisions were made and finely tuned. Leadership and the ability to think soundly and active decisively was the measure of FDR's best selections.