Congratulations, President-Elect Obama

I am of course disappointed that my guy lost the Presidential election yesterday. But I think it is very important today to recognize the significance of Barack Obama's election in the context of America's social history. The election of an African-American to the Presidency is a huge step - not the first step, not the last step, but a big step - towards realizing Dr. Martin Luther King's dream of a nation where we are all judged by the content of our character and not by the color of our skin.

I wish our new President well, and I pray that he will be blessed with the wisdom he will need to lead our nation in the years ahead. I will be watching with great interest as he makes the very difficult transition from campaign mode to governing mode. A campaign can succeed on vague promises, but government requires specificity. It's easy to criticize a President after the fact for every decision he makes. It's much harder to sit in that round room and make the difficult decisions that have to be made and that you know will be loudly criticized by others. I hope Barack Obama is up to it.