Fine, I'll write something already

After getting bitched out by both Dr. Wife and my friend Nate "All You Haters" about my recent predilection for Twitter vs. full blog posts, I will concede defeat and write something.

Last night, America made a great choice. Barack Obama is our President-Elect. But I'd like to be clear on one point.

John McCain wasn't my choice for the post. And I think that Sarah Palin, too delicate to withstand a single unscripted press conference, was a bad choice for VP or Governor of Alaska or even head of the PTA.

But had they won, as disheartened and unhappy as I would have been, I'd still be an American.

This morning, a lot of Republicans are going through what the Democrats faced in 2004 -- the majority made a different choice. And I won't lie and say I took it well. I was pissed. I railed against George W. Bush and his power-grabbing ways and policies that denied scientific fact.

But I was still an American. And he was still my President.

It's easy to be the magnanimous winner -- to say that this is the time to put aside our differences and work together -- because my party did win. I'm sure it's much harder to be a gracious loser this morning and accept that not everybody shares your ideas about how this country should be run.

But if you listened to Barack Obama's acceptance speech last night, I don't know how, as an American, you can say no to what he's asking of us. How do you tell people you won't work with them to repair the economy? How do you say no to making America healthier and happier?

I was inspired last night. Even hearing the speech again on my way to work, I got chills. We have problems -- so many problems they're hard to count -- but for the first time in a long time, I have hope that we can solve them. Why? Because by electing Obama, we've faced one of our biggest problems head-on and applied it directly to the nation's forehead. We are equal. We are Americans before we are men and women of a race or a creed or an orientation.

And if we can't take that energy and start healing our other woes, then I don't know what to tell you. I don't know that anything can make America better if this cannot.