President-Elect Barack Obama

An historic event occurred tonight. While I try to remain politically neutral on this blog (and have taken others to task for straying too far into partisan politics), I feel it would be wrong not to acknowledge it.

Congratulations to President-Elect Barack Obama.

President-Elect Obama ran a near-perfect campaign for 18 months. He stayed true to a message to which the American electorate responded in droves. While I am not an Obama supporter on ideological grounds, I hope that President-Elect Obama will honor his campaign promises of change, fiscal responsibility and discipline, and tax breaks for the true “middle class,” and that he will work with all Americans – left, right and that muddled center to which most of us belong – to forge a better future.

He would do well to heed to words of two of his predecessors – Thomas Jefferson:

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

and John Fitzgerald Kennedy:

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer.

E Pluribus Unum