Christine M. Flowers: 'Hope' Obama keeps his word

THE first thing I did when I woke up Wednesday was to look out the window. The sun was rising in the east, the trash trucks were rolling down the street, children were waiting at the bus stops. I even heard a bird chirping.

It was all good, all normal.

This was a blessing because when I put my head on the pillow on Tuesday, I anticipated the Apocalypse. After 21 months of convincing myself that an Obama win would indeed bring change, only of a devastating nature, it was easy to think that life as I knew it would be over.

But life has a funny way of slapping you in the face and pushing you forward, even when you feel battered and bruised. So I'm moving forward. Slowly.

I'm not happy. Nothing about the prospect of an Obama administration gives me hope that my worldview will be manifested in either the policy or the philosophy of the president-elect. He's as far left as any politician in my lifetime, and is most likely even more liberal than he appears.

And yet, despite my sorrow and the unwavering belief that John McCain deserved us and we deserved him, I'm willing to give Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt.

For now.

Everyone gets a honeymoon, and I'm willing to take a watch-and-wait attitude for a while. After all, Obama may not actually succeed in fulfilling some of the promises he made on the campaign trail, like signing the Freedom of Choice Act that would make it virtually impossible to put any reasonable limits on abortion.

Maybe he'll rethink the ill-advised tax hikes that are likely to take money away from the productive sector and use it to underwrite a modified version of class warfare.

If he's wise, he'll abandon his plan to pull our troops out of Iraq in a matter of months, heeding the advice of the generals on the ground and not the anti-war lobby that seems to be gearing up to cripple our national defense.

If he truly puts his Harvard degree to good use, he won't try to refashion the Supreme Court in the image of a tribunal that takes its lead from the New York Times editorial page instead of the Constitution.

And if he's prudent, he'll make sure that his inner circle is purged of any clones of Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers and the do-gooders of ACORN.

Obama isn't dumb. He is, in fact, brilliant. If it were otherwise, this biracial kid from Hawaii wouldn't be poised to sit in the Oval Office. He developed his plan to become president in much the same way Alexander the Great strategized his conquests - methodical steps fueled by flashes of genius.

We know he can win elections. We know he can organize communities. We know he can create alliances with the most disparate people, turning blood-red states blue in the process.

What we don't know is if he can run a country where the average voter is at the very least modestly to the right of him on social and economic policy, where the major reason he was swept into office was anger at the current occupant, where he was, for many, the default candidate.

IHOPE he doesn't view his "landslide" as approval for a radical agenda. I hope he uses his magnificent intellect to really do what he said he would - develop inclusive policies that won't make those of us who voted for McCain and wept when he lost feel like strangers in our own land. After all, "hope" was a big part of his campaign.

On Wednesday morning, someone e-mailed me and asked how it felt to finally be on the outside.

It was a question from someone who despises George Bush and believes Karl Rove was born with horns, enjoying the fact that conservatives had seemingly lost their place in the brave new scheme of things.

Some gloating is to be expected. But President-to-be Obama said we are neither blue states nor red states but the United States. Let's see if he meant it.

Here's "hoping" he does. *

Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer. See her on Channel 6's "Inside Story" Sunday at 11:30 a.m. E-mail cflowers1961@yahoo.com.