It’s time for some reflection on the eve of a new chapter in American history.

Today there was another “the Obama Administration has already betrayed us” comment, followed by a “the Obama Administration will get punked by the Right” comment from our own scholar-philosopher, D.R . Add these to the pile of “the Obama Administration has already betrayed [choose as many as apply: progressive values, the Constitution, women, minorities, gays]” from the Left.

The Right, of course, already has fallen back to their early Clinton Administration battle lines. I understand the Weekly Standard had a Vince Foster retrospective a few days ago. In no time they’ll be assaulting the Obama Administration with all the subtlety of rabid wolverines.

I care about progressive issues as much as anybody, but right now I’m not in the mood to work myself into a lather about what might happen next. This may be because I’m exhausted with being in lathers about one thing or another these past eight years. Or it may be because the Zen training is finally kicking in. Or it may be my advancing age. Barack Obama will be (I believe I’m counting this correctly) the twelfth POTUS in my lifetime. I remember the elections and inaugurations of nine of the past eleven presidents. The one constant is that what president-elects say between election and inauguration has little bearing on what will actually happen in their administrations. People who are parsing Barack Obama’s every utterance for the Deeper Meaning should just stop and chill. Wait until the day after the inauguration to start parsing.

The whole nation is one big, inflamed wound right now. So Obama has been soothing and conciliatory in tone. Of course, the Left doesn’t like this, because we lefties (rightfully) are more in a mood for torches and pitchforks. I don’t think it would hurt us to be more dispassionate toward the departing Bushies, however. “Dispassionate” doesn’t mean “forgiveness,” nor does it mean “letting them get away with war crimes.” It just means inflamed emotions are not conducive to clear thinking and judicious action.

My impression is that Barack Obama has been extremely cautious when speaking of possible investigations of what went on the the Bush Administration mostly because the Bush Administration is still in office. And my guess is that Congress and eventually the Justice Department will get involved in the investigations of Bush II, but that Obama himself will stay in the background in these matters. However, once the Obama Administration begins it won’t hurt to push for investigations. I’m just saying there’s a huge difference in these statements:

• The Obama Administration should authorize investigations into the Bush Administration.
• The Obama Administration already has shown itself to be a pack of liars and cowards for not declaring clear intent to investigate the Bush Administration, even though such declaration would create a political firestorm that could limit the effectiveness of the Obama Administration’s first days in office.

Once again, I say we won’t know what the Obama Administration is going to do until it comes into existence and begins to do things. Then we’ll know. And even then, it may be several weeks before we start to see patterns and tendencies.

Regarding the Right — of course they’re going to continue their well-established pattern of using every lie and smear they can think of to discredit Barack Obama. And some of it probably will stick now and then. But it does seem to me the whole nation is in a very different place from where it was eight years ago, or even four years ago. I don’t think the same old tactics are going to work as well for the Right as in the past. I could be wrong; we’ll see.

Nothing is ever perfect. There are no unmixed blessing. Happy endings are not endings, but moments in time when beneficial forces come together, and as soon as they come together they begin to come apart again. Just because you saved he neighbor’s kid from drowning doesn’t mean the kid won’t grow up to be a serial killer. This is not pessimism, but realism. And I accept this. There’s a Zen saying, “the cup is already broken.” Every solid thing you see around you is just a temporary arrangement of molecules, including you. Do what you can do to make the world better, then let it go.

On the plus side, if you look at American history you see that the best administrations often have been preceded, or even bracketed, by the worst ones. Abraham Lincoln was preceded by James Buchanan and followed by Andrew Johnson, two bottom-of-the-barrel specimens. Franklin Roosevelt came after Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. Maybe circumstance will be kind to America one more time, and give us a great president to follow possibly the all-time worst. We can hope. But at the moment, I’m not going to assume. We’ll see.