My Brother, the Transition, and Me

So yesterday afternoon, while my kids were hovering between calm and chaos, my brother calls. He tells me what he needs to tell me (bring bathing suits home for Thanksgiving!), and then he says this: "And Obama is busy recreating the Clinton administration." Lest you think I'm that much calmer since the election, you should know that this snidely delivered comment created the threat of an exploding skull--my own. Because my brother is one of those weird moderate Republicans at heart with whom I'm supposed to be able to disagree amicably but who in fact drive me a little bananas and ignite my inner three-year-old who wants to stamp her foot and say, "No! I'm right!"

Well, maybe it's just my brother who's that kind of moderate Republicans. Maybe I'd do better with moderate Republicans who didn't spend their eleventh and my eight year giving me wet willies (wet finger in ear) when I was innocently watching MASH reruns while our mother was at the supermarket.

Seriously, though, I think it's pretty facile to say the Obama administration is the Clinton administration relived. Sure, many of the people from Clinton's administration will serve in Obama's. But that doesn't mean the administrations are the same. For example, the selection of Daschle for Health and Human Services speaks to an understanding of the on-the-ground legislating politics that makes Washington go. I don't believe Clinton in his first term had that, and certainly Hillary Clinton in her Health Care Reform efforts didn't have that.

Now, isn't everyone glad we got this out of the way before Thanksgiving so we won't have this fight and I won't have to upstage my older brother in my rightness and none of the children who will be present will be able to use this particular scene in his or her screenplay of a dysfunctional family gathering? I sure am.

Oh, and there's this: Happy Birthday, Louis!