National and Newburyport Local
December 2nd, 2008In two and a half months so much has happened. I feel like I’ve been holding my breath. And the world is still swirling around and it still feels as if I’m out of balance.
A person who does seem to be in balance (and very calm), is our president-elect, Barack Obama.
My one very strong reservation when I went to the voting booth and cast my ballot, was that I had no indication, really, of how Mr. Obama would govern.
And so far, I am unbelievably relieved.
My great hope was that with the chit chat of the “middle” class, Mr. Obama would indeed govern from the “middle,” and with smarts.
And it appears from the appointment of his economic team and his foreign policy team that “middle” and with smarts may be us. In my book so far this is a, “Whew.”
Having blogged The Newburyport Blog for almost 3 years now, and having followed minutely how folks govern on the local level, as I’ve said before, I’ve become a downright “centrist,” because it appears to me that governing from the center, locally, has the best chance of getting things done.
And maybe it’s that just these “up in the air” times are making me cranky (they are making a lot of people cranky), but I’m having very little tolerance for the folks that are on either edge of the spectrum, right or left. My eye-rolling response to both is, “Please give it up, let us get important (vast understatement) things done.”
And what happens nationally, very much effects us locally. Such things as aid to states in financially perilous times, has a whole lot to do with Newburyport, MA, in the hopes that, if it arrives, state aid trickles down to our fair seaside city.
I am local, and I am hoping for good national (as my friend Frank Schaeffer would say) “Juju.”