Puffin’s Place

These post-election days are not as fiery as those before the vote, but I find myself unable to resist the temptation to come back and launch more regular words into Grand Canyon.

Thinking today, for example, of how I feel about Barack Obama.

I am daily proud of his demeanor and restraint. I applaud him for not going cowboy over the Iran drama. I admire his coolness and his almost constant motion toward specific goals. I am proud of him when he is overseas. Our first couple is, to my mind, as good as it gets.

I am frustrated by Obama’s endorsement of the Defense of Marriage Actg; by his failure to move fast in closing Gitmo and sending all of its inhabitants back to their native countries; I wish his environmental people care more about the polar bear; I wish he has not left the LBGT population feeling used for energy and money and then abandoned by Obama’s apparent disinclination to take on the military over the absurd don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy. (Which, come to think of it, might better be invoked with carious Republican pols.)

But in balance, I continue to be relieved and satisfied that Obama won the election. He is the best president we have had in decades. And even he cannot do everything at once. Or buck the self-serving intellectual laziness of the Congress.