Our new president

This video represents the moment we as a country moved past the George W. Bush era to the Barack H. Obama era. As you can tell, the people around me were jubilant. I was too, I think the Obama era will be a definitive time for our country. It has to be. There are too many issues that need urgent addressing that it would be impossible for his tenure to be unremarkable.

But that's not to say that everything will be golden. I believe Barack Obama has many of the qualities that make a good leader - poise, brains, curiosity - but those qualities are necessary, not sufficient. To be remembered as one of the greats requires not a small amount of luck and the right environment. You can have the best ingredients in the world, but if your oven breaks, there's not much you can do to salvage your dish. I suppose the same argument could be made by those in the Bush camp - that 9/11 thrust him into being a wartime president and that he kept the country safe, regardless of his approval ratings. But I wouldn't go that far, you can only make so good of a dish using inferior ingredients.

So, my advice for #44 would be to lead with your instinct, but counter it with reasoned skepticism. Invite the best and the brightest into your advisory circle, but don't let intellectual exercises impede on taking deliberate action. Have a small enough ego that you can admit mistakes, but fight with everything you have for deep seated convictions.

It feels like a breath of fresh air has rushed into Washington. At work, people are beside themselves with the possibility of putting into action many of the concepts only theorized the past 8 years. At the same time, we cannot let ourselves become drunk on power and ambition - we all know how that turns out. As a country, we have to listen to our President's call for sacrifice. Not everything will work, but we have to try everything so that something will. The next four years will be difficult on all of us. I don't expect Obama to have the same approval rating then as he enjoys now, but what he will be doing is laying the groundwork for the next half century of American prosperity. I'm excited to be a part of it and I'm ready to get to work.