I caught a segment about this on KGW earlier today. A school in east Portland is considering a name change and a few students have suggested renaming the building after Barack Obama. Like many liberals in the US, my head is filled with visions of Camelot 2.0 sugarplums and I'm overjoyed that in a few months we'll have someone in the Oval Office that can form complete sentences.

Nonetheless, the celebrations and talk of establishing a national "Obama Day" remind me of the sort of revelry that typically follows the ousting of a third world dictator. Before we start renaming things and setting up national holidays, perhaps we should all wait until Obama actually gets a chance to, you know, do something. The challenges he faces as president are impossibly daunting. I get the feeling that, no matter how hard he strives, Obama will never be able to live up to the sky-high expectations set before him.

In the coming months and years it will be interesting to watch his approval ratings and how quickly the country will forget about the bad ol' days of GW. Here's hoping Obama doesn't become a despised scapegoat for the mistakes of Bush and that the accomplishments of his administration, rather than premature speculation, will land his name on federal buildings and schools across the country.

Labels: politics