What change?

It has been interesting to me in the (only!) two weeks since the election as Barack Obama begins the process of selecting his top staff and Cabinet members - all the howling and screaming from both sides of the aisle about his choices. And about his responses to the Lieberman thing, and John McCain, and Hillary Clinton. As one pundit complained the other day "There's too much nice going on here."

Too much nice? How can you have too much nice? People all over this country have been saying for years, decades actually, that they dislike the personal attacks, the mud-slinging, the rabid partisanship, and all the rest of the nastiness that has contributed greatly and finally over the past eight years to our complete and totally dysfunctional government. Given that, how would you change that other than start being nice?

So here we have it in a nutshell. Obama promised to change the way we do things in Washington DC. And he is. And this change has been accompanied by criticism, second-guessing, outrage, more criticism, and so on. The left-wing blogosphere is yelling that he has abandoned them. The Republicans can't figure out what is going on so they are going back to the campaign mud-slinging. Every appointment is met by criticism. And people are deciding that his administration is a complete and total failure as far as they are concerned, even though Obama has not even taken office yet!

We voted for change. Change we could believe in. He is delivering. But we're not believing in what he is doing. Maybe we should take a look at why that is. Could it be that we really LIKE screaming and mud-slinging? Or is the idea that change is so uncomfortable and so foreign that we'd really rather stick with the status quo?

Myself, I'd rather not. I think there still is NOT enough nice in Washington. We have a long way to go before that really comes to pass and it becomes standard operating practice. But I am very hopeful. It will continue to come in the form of Obama sitting down with John McCain, a man who by all accounts, actively dislikes Obama. He's entitled to his dislike. But Obama did not let that knowledge and that fact interfere with trying to find some common ground on a few issues they can work together on. And what that does is in some ways, force a grudging respect from McCain. He will probably still not like Obama. And that's okay. But at least he will probably actively work FOR something with Obama at times - instead of actively working against him always.

And I am also hopeful that as Obama sets the tone of reconciliation and 'niceness' in Washington, it will encourage all of us to try to emulate him in our daily lives. As someone once said - if you want world peace, you must first be a truly peaceful person yourself.