Barack Obama

Jack's class watched the inauguration a couple of weeks back, and since then it's been Barack this and Barack that. It's amazing to think that the very first President my children will know in their lives is African American. It's wonderful and fabulous and unreal. It just shows how far the world has come. When I was a little girl it was Ronald Reagan. Old. White. Male. Just like all of the presidents before him (except Kennedy who was dreamy and movie star like). He was the first President that I realized as the Pres. I didn't know if he was a Republican or a Democrat (not that I knew what those labels meant anyway), or anything he did politics wise, all I knew was that he was on t.v. a lot. I just thought he was grandfatherly and had a kind voice, that he would be the kind of man that might have candies in his pockets for no other reason than to give out to little kids. I never knew him as an actor and always thought that was a riot whenever they would show some old movie that he had been in. When you are little you never think of people as having whole lives before they became what you know them as. I remember being astonished that he had this life before Nancy and the White House.

So Barack Obama will be my children's Ronald Reagan. I hope that he can live up to the task and be the kind of President that they will look back on as a great man. As one of the best.

Only time will tell . . .