Well, that last entry was something of a buzzkill, wasn’t it? Sorry about that.

(Incidentally, in case you’re wondering why an entry date-stamped last Tuesday didn’t appear until Wednesday night, it’s because your humble proprietor is a dolt who forgot to switch the entry’s status to “published” after he finished writing it. Sometimes you just have weeks like that…)

Anyhow, consider this fair warning: I don’t know if today’s topic is going to be of interest to anyone but myself, as it’s all self-reflective and musing and wool-gathering-y. It is also political and pro-Obama, so my conservative readers who are cringing at every stroke of our new president’s pen — and you know who you are — may want to skip this one. Unless you like getting all worked up at the thought of America hurtling pell-mell toward a gloomy and uncertain future that seems likely to be the exact opposite of everything you personally stand for or have ever believed about your own country. I know the feeling, believe me.

So, did anyone actually follow me through the fold? Okay, then…

I’ve been thinking about why I met President Obama’s inauguration with reservation instead of joining in the enthusiasm I saw around me. Not a big deal perhaps, but I often find myself standing outside the window looking in, so to speak, and I always wonder why, if there’s actually a good reason for it or if there’s simply something in my personal psychology that causes me to resist getting on the bandwagon, even when it seems like a wagon I ought to be scrambling to board. A non-political example from this summer: I wasn’t crazy about The Dark Knight, a movie that many of my friends figured would surely end up on my list of all-time favorites. All the evidence seemed to lead to that conclusion: It was about Batman, one of my favorite comic-book characters; it took its subject matter seriously and attempted to make comic-book superheroics as realistic and plausible as possible; it demonstrated that a superhero story can have the depth and richness of “real” literature, something I’ve been preaching to non-comics-fan people for years; and it was a big, spectacular action movie with real stuntwork and some of the best set-pieces seen in cinema for the last decade or two. And yet… when it came right down to it, I just didn’t care for it all that much. For whatever reason, it left me cold.

My reaction to the inauguration was eerily similar. I should have been partying in the streets, since I am proudly pro-Obama and have spent years counting down the days until the end of the Bush administration. And yet I felt… well, you know how I felt. You read last week’s entry.

After pondering this matter for several days (and exchanging some helpful emails with my perceptive friend Cranky Robert), I think what was going on was partly that I am suspicious of bandwagons — I rarely like whatever’s cool until after long it’s stopped being cool — but also that I’ve been suffering lately from a depressing streak of realism. I know it’s been recently popular in conservative circles to paint Obama supporters as naive, starry-eyed zombie cultists who believe the new president is some kind of demigod who’s going to wave a magic wand and fix everything that’s gone wrong with our country, and are subsequently going to be crushed when that doesn’t happen. But that’s not me. (Honestly, I don’t think there really are any such people; I haven’t met any, at least. This meme strikes me as sour grapes from people who are suffering from their own disillusionment and are frankly baffled and afraid of the pent-up frustration and emotion being expressed by the left.) I know perfectly well that our new president faces a number of incredibly daunting challenges, and that he’s going to make mistakes and experience failures, and that it’s entirely possible his ideas won’t work. (Nevertheless, I like his ideas better than those of the other side.) I also know his political opponents aren’t going to make it easy for him, since success for Obama translates to a defeat for them and that is something they cannot abide, never mind what might be best for the country. (For the record, I don’t think all Republicans are thinking this way, but to say that none are, after all the nonsense and dirty pool we’ve seen in the last 16 years, really would be naive.)

In short, I think I was lukewarm on the inauguration because I don’t want to open myself up to the possibility of feeling disappointed.

I have to say, though, that I have most definitely not been disappointed so far. Within his first three days in office, Obama addressed the three things that troubled me most about his predecessor’s administration: transparency in government, officially sanctioned (and encouraged) torture, and the American gulag at Guantanamo Bay. The transparency thing is especially huge, even if it’s perhaps not something that’s been much discussed in the public sphere. The Bush Administration’s philosophy was, essentially, that their business was none of ours. Now, I don’t know about you, but when someone tells me I don’t need to know something, I immediately want to know what they’re trying to hide. The secrecy of the Bush White House drove me utterly batshit. The public has got to know what our elected officials are doing, who they’re meeting with, and how they’re making decisions. Obama said essentially that on his very first day in office and decreed that his White House will do things differently, which, I think, set the perfect tone to begin his administration.

I concede that the flurry of executive orders reversing Bush-era policies has so far been mostly symbolic, but symbols have real power, which is something the previous administration never seemed to fully grasp (or simply didn’t care about). Gitmo, for example, was a disaster for America’s image abroad, regardless of whether it accomplished any practical good. By locating a prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, rather than on our own soil and then holding people there for years without either declaring them POWs or bringing them before any sort of court, we gave the appearance — again, regardless of whatever the actual reasoning was — of trying to skirt our own laws by doing our dirty work in the peculiar limbo zone of a colonial territory, where the prisoners wouldn’t enjoy any legal protections. Gitmo gave our enemies more ammunition to use against us, by making us seem like exactly the sort of bullying hypocrites they claim we are, people who lecture everybody else on the planet about justice and the rule of law but do not practice it ourselves. It was, in my humble opinion, a big mistake. The expression “winning hearts and minds” was thrown around a lot during the Vietnam War, and I think it’s something we need to revive in our thinking today, because that’s how we’re going to prevail in this conflict: by convincing people around the world, and especially in the Muslim world, that we are what we say we are, not what Osama bin Laden says we are. Obviously we now face the practical question of exactly what to do with the Gitmo prisoners, but closing the camp sends a signal to the world and deprives our enemies of a powerful propaganda and recruiting tool. There’s more to fighting a war than brute military power, and, again, that’s something the previous administration didn’t seem to get. This one does, and I’m delighted. The most stirring paragraph in Obama’s inaugural address, for me, was this:

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint. (Emphasis mine.)

I’m rambling at this point, I know, but I’m just so pleased with what’s come out of the White House in the first week. I like that Obama shares my view of what this country is supposed to be about. I like that he’s made several references since last Tuesday to the importance of science and facts, and I like that he’s repeatedly called this “a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers.” Non-believers — or even those who are simply indifferent to religion, like myself — haven’t felt welcome in our own country in a long time.

I guess that’s the best way to describe how I’m feeling now, a week after President Obama’s inauguration. I still don’t think he’s going to magically fix all our problems. I’m still bracing myself for the inevitable political arguments and disappointments. But I feel welcome in my own country again. Whatever else the Obama presidency does or does not accomplish, that’s a hell of a thing…