Expectations of a Super-man

I was going to take my own picture of this poster, another version of which, enlarged, is now over the T-Shirt Shop on Melrose Avenue. I found it, not easily, on line. I was actually surprised, since I have seen it in my travels a lot in Los Angeles, that it did not have more coverage nationally. Or maybe I just missed it.

Friends of mine who know I was inclined toward McCain have gently approached me to assess a mood about the outcome of the election. They seem to expect some kind of ruthless rage. I don't know why. I can speculate. But I won't. Maybe they figure that most of us in the 47 percentile will put up our version of the sign I used to see in various locales, including my office, about soon to be former President Bush, "He's not my president" accompanied by a Mad Magazine big eared version of his face. I took my McCain-Palin sticker off my car on November 5, and I am now, in my little, non-Washington non-insider way, a member of the "loyal opposition". That's how I view it. He's got the role. I respect the role and thus, the burdens of the man who is in it. And I wish him Godspeed. Yeah, I'd like him to shift on some of his positions. Maybe he will, or maybe he won't. But he's got the big job, and he deserves respect, and a chance. But back to the picture of President Elect Obama as Superman. It's hard enough to be President, but coming in with the aura of being more than human? Whoa!

There is some simplistic idea out there, despite Political Science 101 courses that surely many of the young kids who voted for him had to have taken, that the President can wave his arms and effect the promises that are ab initio generalized hyperbole. He's going to get us out of Iraq, toute suite. He's going to close Guantanamo, he's going to sign FOCA and finally shut up the pro-lifers in the states, he's going to cut taxes of many Americans, particularly apparently the ones who don't pay taxes right now. He's going to solve the economic downturn that had its genesis in the early 1990's, you know, during another Democrat administration. I don't know if he's one for the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, so that for every Conservative Talking Head, there will be the concomitant Liberal Talking Head to counter, no doubt in high decibels.

He is going to have to leap tall buildings in a single bound and right over the heads of any opposition, and be faster than a speeding bullet indeed so they don't see him coming or going.

Me? I am hoping that faced with the reality of what I still think are checks and balances and the input of the real Loyal Opposition, he will do essentially what Clinton did in his turns at the Presidential tiller, he'll take a more centrist tact. And mean it.

Superman is impossible for any mere mortal. President of the United States is probably a close second.