THE LIBERAL THREAD #3- No Debate Please

[ConcKahuna]

HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY DJ!!!!

51 more hours!

Wow, my DIS time is way off...

but WOOHOOO!!!

 

[ConcKahuna]

Yup, my DIS time is 45 minutes off

Instead of BDS, I'm suffering from BDE (Bush's Departure Elation)

 

[chris1gill]

Yup, my DIS time is 45 minutes off

Instead of BDS, I'm suffering from BDE (Bush's Departure Elation)

I might have been estimating

 

[disneyjunkie]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DJ!!!!

63 more hours!

Thank you

Is it today or tomorrow?
Either way, Happy Birthday DisneyJunkie

Thank you

HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY DJ!!!!

51 more hours!

Thank you

51
Wow, it's almost over

 

[ConcKahuna]

I might have been estimating

No, I mean when I post something on the DIS, the time it shows is about 40 minutes prior to the actual time

I had this long post typed up about THIS ARTICLE, with arguments for both sides, and had it set as a nice new thread. Then my stupid internet timed out (the work network is wonky today) and it all was lost

ETA: The forum has this as posted at 10:04, but my computer time is listed as 10:42.

 

[mirmartinez]

No, I mean when I post something on the DIS, the time it shows is about 40 minutes prior to the actual time

I had this long post typed up about THIS ARTICLE, with arguments for both sides, and had it set as a nice new thread. Then my stupid internet timed out (the work network is wonky today) and it all was lost

ETA: The forum has this as posted at 10:04, but my computer time is listed as 10:42.

That the best smilie I could find to show I can relate.

 

[LakeAriel]

Yup, my DIS time is 45 minutes off

Instead of BDS, I'm suffering from BDE (Bush's Departure Elation)

Oh, I love it!

Happy Birthday DJ!

 

[IDoDis]

I might have been estimating

I've been estimating based on the time of the actual swearing in which should be at approximately 11:20 or 11:30 am EST. So, based on my clock now, there's

48 more hours!

 

[IDoDis]

I also noticed the clock is about 25 minutes off The Dis.

 

[designermv]

Happy birthday disneyjunkie!

Wanted to share an article I read in this morning's Washington Post Magazine:

Editor's Note:

By Tom Shroder
Sunday, January 18, 2009; W08

Some events are so far-reaching that we remember them as if we were personally present, even if we were thousands of miles away. John Kennedy was shot near the grassy knoll in Dallas, but the stricken face of the assistant principal appearing in the doorway of my fourth-grade classroom in New York, his hand rising to my teacher's shoulder, the sudden heave of her chest, the sobs as he led her into the hallway, the awful silence as we were left alone -- it felt like something had happened, right in front of us, to change the world.

But there is a rarer form of witnessing history: actually being present where and when it is made. In my life, that's a short list. In 1965, I watched from a school bus window as stoplights flashed off and shop windows went dark, only gradually realizing that it was all the result of a calamitous, multistate blackout that would be memorialized in folk memory as the genesis of a mini baby boom. In 1972, I wandered out of my University of Florida dorm to participate in an antiwar protest just in time to see a phalanx of armor-clad police with riot shields and clubs rush the crowd. As I fled, I saw a red brick streak through the air, intersecting with one of the officers, who crumpled to the ground. That evening, as tear gas fogged the sky and armored cars prowled the main drag, I watched it all play out again on television, narrated by Walter Cronkite. In 1997, police dogs sniffed my Miami Beach yard as a SWAT team closed in on serial killer Andrew Cunanan, who was hiding on a houseboat just blocks away.

Brushes with a more hopeful kind of history seem rarer. That same year, I wandered out of my Miami office to see the World Series champion Marlins' victory parade. I thought I was too late -- there were no barricades or cops, and hundreds of people milled aimlessly in the middle of the street. As I turned to leave, a line of open convertibles, giddy heroes atop the back seats, appeared, inching through the pressing crowd as the players slapped high-fives and exchanged gleeful whoops with all. As small a slice of history as that represented, the moment remains forever charged in my mind.

So, I understand why as many as 2 million people are prepared to sit in epic traffic, press into overwhelmed subway trains and abandon all impatience for hours of standing and shuffling in the cold. The inauguration of Barack Obama as our 44th president is no small slice of history. It's a whole pie's worth. Any inauguration is significant, but one proving that we live in a nation where, when the chips were down, a candidate was judged not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character, is a dream come true.

Tom Shroder can be reached at shrodert@washpost.com.

My favorite part: Any inauguration is significant, but one proving that we live in a nation where, when the chips were down, a candidate was judged not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character, is a dream come true.

 

[IDoDis]

My favorite part: Any inauguration is significant, but one proving that we live in a nation where, when the chips were down, a candidate was judged not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character, is a dream come true.

My sentiments, exactly!

 

[designermv]

I think it's tinfoil hat day in con-land.

 

[chrisw127]

I think it's tinfoil hat day in con-land.

Shocking!

Happy Birthday, Disney Junkie

 

[IDoDis]

Uhh... yeah. I was thinking the same thing. It's the same ol' same ol' paranoid garbage. They're even dissing Abraham Lincoln now. The depths some people will go to is sad. Very sad.

 

[lisadr]

Good Afternoon Everyone

 

[LakeAriel]

Uhh... yeah. I was thinking the same thing. It's the same ol' same ol' paranoid garbage. They're even dissing Abraham Lincoln now. The depths some people will go to is sad. Very sad.

Is anyone surprised? Really? One of them is still perseverating about his birth certificate, still claiming he isn't a citizen.
I can't wait till Tuesday.

 

[designermv]

Hi Lisa!

And everyone else.

 

[Reflection]

Good afternoon fellow libs. Interesting reading in today's paper. Here's the first of a couple of items (the highlighted items are ones I particularly agree with):

10 Take Aways From the Bush Years

By Bob Woodward
Sunday, January 18, 2009; B01



There's actually a lot that President-elect Barack Obama can learn from the troubled presidency of George W. Bush. Over the past eight years, I have interviewed President Bush for nearly 11 hours, spent hundreds of hours with his administration's key players and reviewed thousands of pages of documents and notes. That produced four books, totaling 1,727 pages, that amount to a very long case study in presidential decision-making, and there are plenty of morals to the story. Presidents live in the unfinished business of their predecessors, and Bush casts a giant shadow on the Obama presidency with two incomplete wars and a monumental financial and economic crisis. Here are 10 lessons that Obama and his team should take away from the Bush experience.

1. Presidents set the tone. Don't be passive or tolerate virulent divisions.

In the fall of 2002, Bush witnessed a startling face-off between National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in the White House Situation Room after Rumsfeld had briefed the National Security Council on the Iraq war plan. Rice wanted to hold on to a copy of the Pentagon briefing slides, code-named Polo Step. "You won't be needing that," Rumsfeld said, reaching across the table and snatching the Top Secret packet away from Rice -- in front of the president. "I'll let you two work it out," Bush said, then turned and walked out. Rice had to send an aide to the Pentagon to get a bootlegged copy from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Bush should never have put up with Rumsfeld's power play. Instead of a team of rivals, Bush wound up with a team of back-stabbers with long-running, poisonous disagreements about foreign policy fundamentals.

2. The president must insist that everyone speak out loud in front of the others, even -- or especially -- when there are vehement disagreements.

During the same critical period, Vice President Cheney was urging Secretary of State Colin Powell to consider seriously the possibility that Iraq might be connected to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Powell found the case worse than ridiculous and scornfully concluded that Cheney had what Powell termed a "fever." (In private, Powell used to call the Pentagon policy shop run by Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, who shared Cheney's burning interest in supposed ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq, a "Gestapo office.")

Powell was right to conclude that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden did not work together. But Cheney and Powell did not have this crucial debate in front of the president -- even though such a discussion might have undermined one key reason for war. Cheney provided private advice to the president, but he was rarely asked to argue with others and test his case. After the invasion, Cheney had a celebratory dinner with some aides and friends. "Colin always had major reservations about what we were trying to do," Cheney told the group as they toasted Bush and laughed at Powell. This sort of derision undermined the administration's unity of purpose -- and suggests the nasty tone that can emerge when open debate is stifled by long-running feuds and personal hostility.

3. A president must do the homework to master the fundamental ideas and concepts behind his policies.

The president should not micromanage, but understanding the ramifications of his positions cannot be outsourced to anyone.

For example, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the commander of the U.S. forces in Iraq in 2004-07, concluded that President Bush lacked a basic grasp of what the Iraq war was about. Casey believed that Bush, who kept asking for enemy body counts, saw the war as a conventional battle, rather than the counterinsurgency campaign to win over the Iraqi population that it was. "We cannot kill our way to victory in Iraq," Gen. David Petraeus said later. In May 2008, Bush insisted to me that he, of all people, knew all too well what the war was about.

4. Presidents need to draw people out and make sure that bad news makes it to the Oval Office.

On June 18, 2003, before real trouble had developed in Iraq, retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, the first official to head the Iraqi reconstruction effort, warned Rumsfeld that disbanding the Iraqi army and purging too many former Baath Party loyalists had been "tragic" mistakes. But in an Oval Office meeting with Bush later that day, none of this came up, and Garner reported to a pleased president that, in 70 meetings with Iraqis, they had always said, "God bless Mr. George Bush." Bush should have asked Garner whether he had any worries -- perhaps even kicking Rumsfeld out of the Oval Office and saying something like, "Jay, you were there. I insist on the ground truth. Don't hold anything back."

Bush sometimes assumed that he knew his aides' private views without asking them one-on-one. He made probably the most important decision of his presidency -- whether to invade Iraq -- without directly asking either Powell, Rumsfeld or Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet for their bottom-line recommendations. (Instead of consulting his own father, former president George H.W. Bush, who had gone to war in 1991 to kick the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, the younger Bush told me that he had appealed to a "higher father" for strength.)

5. Presidents need to foster a culture of skepticism and doubt.

During a December 2003 interview with Bush, I read him a quote from his closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, about the experience of receiving letters from family members of slain soldiers who had written that they hated him. "And don't believe anyone who tells you when they receive letters like that, they don't suffer any doubt," Blair had said.

"Yeah," Bush replied. "I haven't suffered doubt."

"Is that right?" I asked. "Not at all?"

"No," he said.

Presidents and generals don't have to live on doubt. But they should learn to love it. "You should not be the parrot on the secretary's shoulder," said Marine Gen. James Jones, Obama's incoming national security adviser, to his old friend Gen. Peter Pace, who was then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- a group Jones thought had been "systematically emasculated by Rumsfeld." Doubt is not the enemy of good policy; it can help leaders evaluate alternatives, handle big decisions and later make course corrections if necessary.

6. Presidents get contradictory data, and they need a rigorous way to sort it out.

In 2004-06, the CIA was reporting that Iraq was getting more violent and less stable. By mid-2006, Bush's own NSC deputy for Iraq, Meghan O'Sullivan, had a blunt assessment of conditions in Baghdad: "It's hell, Mr. President." But the Pentagon remained optimistic and reported that a strategy of drawing down U.S. troops and turning security over to the Iraqis would end in "self-reliance" in 2009. As best I could discover, the president never insisted that the contradiction between "hell" and "self-reliance" be resolved.

7. Presidents must tell the public the hard truth, even if that means delivering very bad news.

For years after the Iraq invasion, Bush consistently offered upbeat public assessments. That went well beyond the infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner that he admitted last Monday had been a mistake. "Absolutely, we're winning," the president said during an October 2006 news conference. "We're winning." His confident remarks came during one of the lowest points of the war, at a time when anyone with a TV screen knew that the war was going badly. On Feb. 5, 2005, as he was moving up from his first-term role as Rice's deputy to become national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley had offered a private, confidential assessment of the problems of Bush's Iraq-dominated first term. "I give us a B-minus for policy development," he said, "and a D-minus for policy execution." The president later told me that he knew that the Iraq "strategy wasn't working." So how could the United States be winning a war with a failing strategy?

After 9/11, Bush spoke forthrightly about a war on terror that might last a generation and include other attacks on the U.S. homeland. That straight talk marked the period of Bush's greatest leadership and highest popularity. A president is strong when he is the voice of realism.

8. Righteous motives are not enough for effective policy.

"I believe we have a duty to free people," Bush told me in late 2003. I believe that he truly wanted to bring democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq. In preparing his second inaugural address in 2005, for example, Bush told his chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, "The future of America and the security of America depends on the spread of liberty." That got the idealistic Gerson so pumped that he set out to produce the foreign policy equivalent of Albert Einstein's unified field theory of the universe -- a 17-minute inaugural address in which the president said that his goal was nothing less than "the ending of tyranny in our world."

But this high purpose often blinded Bush and his aides to the consequences of this mad dash to democracy. In 2005, for example, Bush and his war cabinet spent much of their time promoting free elections in Iraq -- which wound up highlighting the isolation of the minority Sunnis and setting the stage for the raging sectarian violence of 2006.

9. Presidents must insist on strategic thinking.

Only the president (and perhaps the national security adviser) can prod a reactive bureaucracy to think about where the administration should be in one, two or four years. Then detailed, step-by-step tactical plans must be devised to try to get there. It's easy for an administration to become consumed with putting out brush fires, which often requires presidential involvement. (Ask Obama how much time he's been spending on the Gaza war.) But a president will probably be judged by the success of his long-range plans, not his daily crisis management.

For example, in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the quality of the planning for combat operations ranged from adequate to strong, but far too little attention was devoted to what might come after the fall of the Taliban and the Baath Party. Some critical strategic decisions -- to disband the Iraqi army, force Baathists out of government and abolish an initial Iraqi government council -- were made on the ground in Iraq, without the involvement of the NSC and the president.

Obama would do well to remember the example of a young Democratic president who was willing to make long-range plans. Bill Clinton began his presidency in 1993 after having promised to cut the federal deficit in half in four years. The initial plan looked shaky, and Clinton took a lot of heat for more than a year. But he and his team stuck to their basic strategy of cutting federal spending and raising taxes, which laid a major part of the foundation of the economic boom of the Clinton era. It was classic strategic planning, showing a willingness to pay a short-term price for the sort of long-term gains that go down in the history books.

10. The president should embrace transparency. Some version of the behind-the-scenes story of what happened in his White House will always make it out to the public -- and everyone will be better off if that version is as accurate as possible.

On March 8, 2008, Hadley made an extraordinary remark about how difficult it has proven to understand the real way Bush made decisions. "He will talk with great authority and assertiveness," Hadley said. " 'This is what we're going to do.' And he won't mean it. Because he will not have gone through the considered process where he finally is prepared to say, 'I've decided.' And if you write all those things down and historians get them, [they] say, 'Well, he decided on this day to do such and such.' It's not true. It's not history. It's a fact, but it's a misleading fact."

Presidents should beware of such "misleading facts." They should run an internal, candid process of debate and discussion with key advisers that will make sense when it surfaces later. This sort of inside account will be told, at least in part, during the presidency. But the best obtainable version will emerge more slowly, over time, and become history.

woodwardb@washpost.com


Bob Woodward is an associate editor of The Washington Post and the author of four books on President Bush: "Bush at War," "Plan of Attack," "State of Denial" and "The War Within." Evelyn Duffy contributed to this article.

 

[Reflection]

An interesting perspective about the surge. This person says it worked and Democrats should accept this finding.

Most Democrats think Bush has been an atrocious president, and they want to usher him out of office with the jeers he so richly deserves. Even if they suspect, in their heart of hearts, that he was right about the surge, they don't want to give him the satisfaction.

Yet they should -- not for his sake but for their own. Because Bush has been such an unusually bad president, an entire generation of Democrats now takes it for granted that on the big questions, the right is always wrong. Older liberals remember the Persian Gulf War, which most congressional Democrats opposed and most congressional Republicans supported -- and the Republicans were proven right. They also remember the welfare reform debate of the mid-1990s, when prominent liberals predicted disaster, and disaster didn't happen.

Here's the full article...

Admit It: The Surge Worked

By Peter Beinart
Sunday, January 18, 2009; B07



It's no longer a close call: President Bush was right about the surge. According to Michael O'Hanlon and Jason Campbell of the Brookings Institution, the number of Iraqi war dead was 500 in November of 2008, compared with 3,475 in November of 2006. That same month, 69 Americans died in Iraq; in November 2008, 12 did.

Violence in Anbar province is down more than 90 percent over the past two years, the New York Times reports. Returning to Iraq after long absences, respected journalists Anthony Shadid and Dexter Filkins say they barely recognize the place.

Is the surge solely responsible for the turnaround? Of course not. Al-Qaeda alienated the Sunni tribes; Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army decided to stand down; the United States assassinated key insurgent and militia leaders, all of which mattered as much if not more than the increase in U.S. troops. And the decline in violence isn't necessarily permanent. Iraq watchers warn that communal distrust remains high; if someone strikes a match, civil war could again rage out of control.

Moreover, even if the calm endures, that still doesn't justify the Bush administration's initial decision to go to war, which remains one of the great blunders in American foreign policy history. But if Iraq overall represents a massive stain on Bush's record, his decision to increase America's troop presence in late 2006 now looks like his finest hour. Given the mood in Washington and the country as a whole, it would have been far easier to do the opposite. Politically, Bush took the path of most resistance. He endured an avalanche of scorn, and now he has been vindicated. He was not only right; he was courageous.

It's time for Democrats to say so. During the campaign they rarely did for fear of jeopardizing Barack Obama's chances of winning the presidency. But today, the hesitation is less tactical than emotional. Most Democrats think Bush has been an atrocious president, and they want to usher him out of office with the jeers he so richly deserves. Even if they suspect, in their heart of hearts, that he was right about the surge, they don't want to give him the satisfaction.

Yet they should -- not for his sake but for their own. Because Bush has been such an unusually bad president, an entire generation of Democrats now takes it for granted that on the big questions, the right is always wrong. Older liberals remember the Persian Gulf War, which most congressional Democrats opposed and most congressional Republicans supported -- and the Republicans were proven right. They also remember the welfare reform debate of the mid-1990s, when prominent liberals predicted disaster, and disaster didn't happen.

Younger liberals, by contrast, have had no such chastening experiences. Watching the Bush administration flit from disaster to disaster, they have grown increasingly dismissive of conservatives in the process. They consume partisan media, where Republican malevolence is taken for granted. They laugh along with the "Colbert Report," the whole premise of which is that conservatives are bombastic, chauvinistic and dumb. They have never had the ideologically humbling experience of watching the people whose politics they loathe be proven right.

In this way, they are a little like the Bushies themselves. One reason the Bush administration fell prey to such monumental hubris was that it didn't take its critics seriously. Convinced that the Reagan years had forever vindicated deregulated capitalism and unfettered American might, the Bushies blithely dismissed liberals who warned about deregulation, or Europeans who warned about military force, on the grounds that history had consistently proved those critics wrong. "You want to know what I really think of the Europeans?" a top Bush official declared during the Iraq debate. "I think they have been wrong on just about every major international issue for the past 20 years."

Today, by contrast, it is conservatives who have been proven wrong again and again. Politically and intellectually, the right is discredited, and the arguments of its rump minority in Congress will be easy to dismiss. Liberal self-confidence is sky-high.

That's why it's important to admit that Bush was right about the surge. Doing so would remind Democrats that no one political party, or ideological perspective, has a monopoly on wisdom. That recognition can be the difference between ambition -- which the Obama presidency must exhibit -- and hubris, which it can ill afford.

Being proven right too many times is dangerous. It breeds intellectual arrogance and complacency. As the Democrats prepare to take over Washington, they should publicly acknowledge that on the surge, they were wrong. That acknowledgment may not do much for Bush's legacy, but it could do wonders for their own.

Peter Beinart, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes a monthly column for The Post.

 

[Reflection]

I wonder if the DSM will come up with a diagnosis for this type of attitude? Is labeling Obama "The One" the first item on the right wing talking points memo???

It's Your Party, And I'll Cry If I Want To

By S.E. Cupp
Sunday, January 18, 2009; B02


NEW YORK

Recently I let a friend spoil a perfectly good night of planned debauchery by regaling me with stories of the first presidential inauguration, held here in New York City back in 1789.

Over frothy Belgian stouts, we sat on stools at a neighborhood dive below 14th Street, and he schooled me on the historic proceedings from George Washington's big day, which I gathered involved thousands of people in the streets, cannons, dancing and lots of famous folks. The celebration lasted nearly a month.

I'm grateful that some things have changed.

I'm proud of New York's role in early American history, but if Alexander Hamilton were alive today, I'd take him to that very bar and buy him a beer for persuading us Northerners to move the nation's capital to Washington. Thanks to him, I don't have to endure a month-long celebration in my backyard for the guy I didn't vote for.

That may sound bitter. I'm not. As a 20-something conservative who voted for John McCain, I'm now part of the loyal opposition. Barack Obama will become my president, and for the good of the country, I want him to succeed. I appreciate the historic nature of his inauguration and am proud that my generation had a role in delivering this moment.

But I was just starting to rejoin the general population and eat solid foods again. And now I must brace myself for Tuesday, when all of Washington, the country -- the world! -- boogies down in honor of the man I was absolutely certain would be a mere momentary distraction.

The Franklin Mint is telling me that I need to honor this historic election by buying commemorative coins bearing Obama's face. Life magazine thinks I should own its picture book, "The American Journey of Barack Obama." And Comcast has decided that I should want to watch Obama coverage 24 hours a day on their new channel devoted to The One.

In the face of all this excitement, it's not an easy thing, moving on, especially for young conservatives, who don't have decades of experience behind us dealing with losses to Kennedy, Carter and Clinton. Many of my friends who worked for McCain had hoped to find jobs in his administration -- but now they're merely lawyers, bankers and consultants again, and in some cases have gone back to companies that no longer have room for them and industries that have been decimated by the economic crisis. I'm a political writer and commentator, so Obama's election is actually good news for me, professionally. I now get to respectfully disagree, rather than obsequiously concur.

But I run with an eclectic crowd in New York, and not surprisingly, most of my friends are Democrats. There are, after all, more registered Democrats in New York City than there are people in Vermont, North Dakota, Wyoming and Alaska combined. (There are more cats than registered Republicans in New York City. Four times more. I've done the math.) While some of my liberal friends are too preoccupied with repairing their dwindling 401(k)s to care much about getting to Washington for the inauguration, others are planning their own soirees here in the city, and others still are planning their pilgrimages to the capital city.

Some friends at New York University, where I'm a grad student, will watch inaugural events at one of the school's newly installed viewing stations set up all over campus. Of course, I'm not even sure that NYU's efforts are necessary. Nearly every television set in nearly every bar will be on Obama-watch for the week. The Jumbotrons in Times Square will broadcast Obama's magnified visage to thousands of excited tourists bouncing their way from the Hard Rock Cafe to Toys R Us to "The Lion King" on Broadway. Just press your face against the glass of any deli window, and you too can watch the ceremonies.

None of my conservative friends -- in New York we all know each other, since there are roughly 14 of us -- plan to attend the actual event, and very few of us are planning to rearrange our schedules to watch on TV. Hampton Williams, the head of NYU's College Republicans, is staying in town to prepare for the start of his last semester. "I have come to the conclusion that this will be the highlight of my liberal friends' lives," he told me over a flurry of Facebook exchanges. "Eight years down the road I will have a career and a family, and my liberal friends will have a faded Obama button." The slight tone of resentment did not go unnoticed.

Brett Joshpe and I wrote our first book together. When I shot him a quick e-mail the other day to ask about his "views on the inauguration," I knew that he, like any true New Yorker, would wear his cynicism as a badge of honor. "Inauguration week in New York City will be like any other for me," he replied. "I intend to watch the historical moment (perhaps on mute to avoid the droning of talking heads) and will neither go out of my way to participate in it nor will I avoid it."

It was hard to find any conservatives in New York, in fact, who could put a happy spin on our grim situation. But I knew that if anyone could, it would be my friend Margaret Hoover, a political strategist whom I routinely bump into in the Fox News building. (Which, by the way, is the only refuge New York Republicans have. Walking into Fox is like slipping into a warm bath.)

Margaret is pep incarnate. And she's recently engaged, so it was impossible for her take to be anything but blindingly sunny. And it was -- in fact, she offered the first exclamation point. "We are all Americans, and should be proud the whole world is watching!" she wrote in a cheerful e-mail. "Regardless of who you voted for, next week will be an incredible moment in American history, marked by a peaceful transition of power to the first black president."

Though I appreciated her good spirits, they didn't really ease my ambivalence about the inauguration, especially considering how jubilant the mood in Manhattan will be. But as bad as we have it in New York, my conservative friends in Washington have it worse, and many are planning their escapes. Lobbyist John Goodwin is spending four days with 10 pals in a cabin in Maryland, skiing and playing board games. J.P. Freire, the managing editor of the American Spectator, hopes to rent a lake or beach house with some buddies. "You can't get away from this" in town, he wrote. "It'll be in the bars till 4 a.m. every night when you're trying to sleep, and it'll flood the streets with traffic when you need to get groceries."

As for me, I'll have to watch my fair share of coverage for my job. But maybe at some point I'll wander downtown to Wall Street, where George Washington was inaugurated, and try to imagine what it was like for New Yorkers to throw the first president of the United States his first inaugural ball. As much as I hate admitting it, I bet that like that first one, this year's inauguration will be a pretty good time. Just wish I could get in a partying mood.