Am I the only one who will not be disappointed if Barack Obama ends up being the conciliatory, level-headed, intelligent, kind, objective thinker that I voted for? Already, I have heard pundits and apparent intellectuals bemoan what they see as a potentially crippling shortcoming in Obama's obsessive commitment to reaching across the aisle, making friends, and surrounding himself with people who seem to be committed to thinking without the moral shackles of dogmatic ideologies. 

President Obama is the first Black President. Does that mean he has to be a black president? He had the most "liberal" voting record in the Senate (a relatively non-descriptive adjective indicating not too much more than voting on the other side of Bush policies). Does that mean he has to be the most liberal president? Will he fail the American people if he tries to do what is best for all American people? I thought we were the post-partisan, post-racial, post-civil rights generation. Shouldn't we let our president represent that? Isn't that the Hope, and the Change, that we rallied around?