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Am I the only one suffering from Obama Fatigue?  Surely not… after all, 46% of voters opted for John McCain instead.  But good gravy, you can’t walk into a store here in DC without running into Obama Inaugural merchandise, Obama Commemoratives, and just plain Obama on the cover of a ton of magazines.  I counted 10 in the last newsstand I stopped at before reaching my gate at Reagan National Aiport.

Historic election, first African-American President, Change.gov, blah blah blah.  I was mightily tired of the election campaign, and now I’m mightily tired of Obamamania. 

• Government should be as small as possible.  It’s said that John Quincy Adams ran the entire Executive Branch out of a roll-top desk.  If only!
• It’s not the government’s money.  It’s my money, and it’s your money.  Republicans used to say this explicitly, and won elections by doing so.  They don’t seem to say it anymore, and look where it’s got them.
• The government takes our money by the only legitimate form of armed robbery in our society: taxation.  Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) was 100% wrong when he said, “I think there are a lot of rich people out there who we can tax at a point down the road to recover some of this money…” Recover is the operative word here, and Frank is wrong because the government has no money of its own to recover.
• Entitlement programs are insidious and not only because they rob the poor of (some or all of) their motivation for self-improvement.  Each dollar I have is an opportunity to, among other things, experience the power of voluntary giving.  Each dollar the government takes from me takes that opportunity as well.
• We should allow the Big Three automakers to fail.  The auto workers, having nearly killed the goose that lays the golden eggs, would like to do the same to the rest of us. 

Well, that was unpleasant.

And yet… yesterday’s election may have been the most remarkable thing Barack Obama will ever accomplish: a final chapter in America’s history of race relations.  While there will continue to be disparities of various kinds between whites and blacks, it’s very hard to argue that America is a racist country once a black man has been elected President.

Congratulations are due to the President-elect, and are hereby offered.

Now it is time to wait and see.  Many journalists have written that Obama is a blank slate, that he hasn’t told us — not really — what he believes in, or what he’ll do as President.  There’s some truth to that.  And many Presidencies end up being very different from what the candidate talked about on the campaign trail.  No one expected, for example, comprehensive welfare reform and “the era of big government is over” when Bill Clinton was elected in November of 1992.  No one expected the War on Terror or Medicare Part D when George W. Bush was elected in November of 2000. What kind of President will Barack Obama be?  We’ll find out.

In the mean time, I hope those of us on the short side of the vote count can avoid being as… uncivil… as those on the short side the last couple of times.  While I expect that I will disagree with President Obama on a great many issues, I intend to treat him with the respect due the office of President. The liberals have spent the past eight years accusing President Bush of being every kind of evil imaginable, mostly because of the closeness of the 2000 election.  The conservatives spent the previous eight years accusing President Clinton of every kind of dishonesty, largely because Ross Perot took more votes away from the Republicans than from the Democrats.  All of this has been damaging to the political fabric of our country.

Our job now, as conservatives, is to regroup and recharge for another election two years from now.  At present, we are the loyal opposition, working to block the worst excesses of a politically powerful majority.