But I have a President that doesn’t suck, and that ain’t a bad thing.

Cheers and best wishes to all. Check out WhiteHouse.gov; I know it’s all symbolic at this point, but it’s something to see his face and name there.

Now let’s get to work, folks.

You know what this means right? It means that there are 14 year olds that are more connected than our president is currently.

Not to mention 8 and 10 year olds.

Yup, this whole no-e-mail thing seems pretty messed up. You’d think that the full resources of the United States ought to be able to do better than sending the poor fellow into the IT stone age as his reward for being elected to the highest office in the land. What I’d really rather see is some of that “Yes we can” attitude applied to this problem, both because I think it makes sense for the way that Obama works and because it has the potential to improve the security and sensibility of everyone’s IT usage.

At the moment, for example, most people’s use of e-mail is pretty haphazard and insecure. Almost no one is using digital signatures, so forging e-mail is all too easy, which then makes certain kinds of phishing scams far easier to perpetrate. Widespread use of a proper signature system would in fact make large quantities of e-mail spam trivial to identify, as messages that didn’t bear a certified signature could be discarded without further consideration. Similarly, there are quality (if greatly underused) tools that allow us to encrypt important e-mails in such a way that they can’t be (easily) read by anyone other than the intended recipient.

What better opportunity, then, to do better?

A politician (including a President) has many important roles, and one of those is to help inform and educate the public on matters of significance. And this isn’t a matter of elitism, it’s a simple matter of access to resources. There are lots of things that I recognize are probably “important”, but don’t have the time or resources to become expert on. One would presume that if the President labeled something as “important” whole staffs could pop into existence to study the issue, generate summary reports and recommendations, etc.

Here, then, we have a chance for Obama to say that he doesn’t want to lose his electronic tools, and bring the scientific and technological resources to bear to secure and archive those transactions as required by his office. The process itself should be transparent, as the best security is obtained through transparent use of high-quality algorithms and tools, which then means that many of the benefits of this analysis and research can be shared more widely. If, for example, the President started using digital signatures on his public messages, you can bet that all the hip kids (i.e., the people that will be running the world in 10 years) would be installing the software needed to check those signatures at warp factor 9. Then they’d start signing their messages, and the snowball would be off down the mountainside.

These sorts of technologies depend heavily on a perceived use — people aren’t going to adopt X until they perceive that enough other people are using X to make it worth their while. As a small fry, I can adopt all I want and rant ’til I’m blue, but I don’t have the necessary weight to pull much of anyone along with me. Obama, on the other hand, can have a profound influence through fairly simple actions.

This could also open up a wonderful public discussion of security in general, which impacts everything from Facebook to ATM PINs to electronic voting machines, things that are woven deep into the fabric of our social, economic, and political lives. Things that matter, but which we take for granted or ignore.

So now’s the time — likely the best time ever — to move us all forward instead of holding our newly elected President back.

Yes we can.

For me the most powerful image of the night was Obama’s and Biden’s families on the stage together after Obama’s acceptance speech in Chicago. There we saw black and white children hugging and celebrating together on stage, interacting with a comfort that would have inspired beatings, or worse, in the living memory of many who voted. These children will walk the halls of the White House, not as tourists, but as residents. These children’s lives are one giant step closer to the dream espoused in the Civil Rights Movement, in the Suffragette Movement, in the Emancipation Proclamation, and in the Declaration of Independence. These children represent our future, as do all children.

Obama was elected on the promise that he can help us make a better world for all our children. Now we all have an obligation to work with the people we elected to make good on those promises.

Thanks to the great folks that came over to watch the returns with us, and for all the friends and family that we shared this with on-line and on the phone. It was an honor to have shared this historic night with you all.

That doesn’t mean he can’t still at least one more great service for his country.

He can try to return the Republican Party to their senses. The party of Eisenhower and Lincoln has been hijacked by wingnuts who would paint me a commie wacko for believing bizarre ideas like women and blacks are people, education and science are key to the health and future of the country, genuine love and affection is a precious thing wherever we find it, the founding fathers meant it when they emphasized the separation of church and state, and the federal government has a vital role in investing in the future of the country. These aren’t radical leftist ideas – these are ideas that were the bread and butter of Eisenhower style Republicans, ideas that grow directly from the ideals laid out by the founding fathers. The Republican Party, however, has been carted off into crazy land by deeply fundamentalist, irrational, anti-competence nutjobs.

And it’s not just me that feels that way. Colin Powell is one of the most articulate and best known Republican defectors in this election, but he’s just the public face of a much bigger discontent with their party. Tonight the Republican party suffered a shattering defeat tonight on almost every front, and alarm bells must be ringing up and down conservative corridors all across the country.

I’m no Republican, I’m absolutely thrilled with the results tonight, and I’m a lot more likely to vote for a donkey than an elephant. I do, however, have a vested interest in a healthy, vigorous democracy, as do we all. And that isn’t best served by a single dominant party with only a crippled opposition party. Just as importantly, if the Republican party can be brought to its senses, it allows a much more realistic spectrum of political discussion which is vital as we face a broad array of shifting challenges.

So McCain can make yet another valuable contribution to our country. He can help fix one of the two major political parties in this country at a point where they desperately need the help. With the help of defectors like Powell he can bring together the sensible folks in his party, the people that can do basic math, balance budgets, value competence over cronyism, and focus on progress instead of division.

McCain’s concession speech was a gracious view of the man that inspired so much enthusiasm 8 years ago and across his career. I hope he can make something good out of the the bitter lessons of this election and the last eight years, and work to heal his party (although maybe not too quickly).

Both Obama and McCain have important work to do, and we all benefit if they succeed. Wish them well.

Who should you vote for?

Mike Gravel				114
Barack Obama				109
Hillary Clinton				57
John McCain	-12
Ron Paul	-33
Mike Huckabee	-123

You expected: Barack Obama
Your recommendation: Mike Gravel

Party: Democratic
Born: 1930, Springfield, Massachusetts
Family: Married twice. Two children and four grandchildren
Career: US Army; Special Agent in the Counter Intelligence Corps; taxi driver; barman; brakeman; property developer
Political career: 3rd Speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives, 1965-6; US Senator from Alaska 1969-1981. Environment and Public Works and Finance and Interior Committees; chaired the Energy, Water Resources, and Environmental Pollution subcommittees
Hot topic: Fair tax
Did you know? Born to French-Canadian immigrant parents, Marie Bourassa and Alphonse Gravel; Mike spoke only French until he was seven years old
Supported by: Ralph Nader

As far as those silly candidate like things go, Obama pretty much cleaned up in Stevens Country, mirroring his success in Minnesota in general:

It’s hard for me to make a lot of immediate sense out of the results nationwide as they seem extremely scattered. One thing that I think is interesting, though, is that Clinton only carried more than 60% in one state (Arkansas – her previous home), while Obama carried 8 states with more than 60%, two of which were over 70% and one (Idaho) with a whopping 80%! OK, I realize that 80% of the handful of people in Idaho aren’t going to swing a national presidential election, but the fact that he carried so many states so strongly does seem to speak to larger questions of electability in November.

Obviously technical issues aren’t the only important issues facing the country, and silicon valley tech issues aren’t necessarily always the same as general science issues. Nothing was said about the war in Iraq, for example, and while they wisely include things things like math and science education in their focus issues, there’s no mention of the continuing struggle over the stain of creationism in that education.

Not perfect, but a thoughtful summary of positions on an important set of issues.

The last seven years of mismanagement, deception, and chest thumping give one at least slight pause before owning up to being from the U.S. out here in the wide world beyond Kansas. Obama’s win in Iowa, however, is something we can all be proud of regardless of the final result in November. To quote the NY Times:

Mr. Obama’s victory in this overwhelmingly white state stood as a powerful answer to the question of whether America was prepared to vote for a black person for president.

The caucus result does have a very scary side in Huckabee’s success:

Polls of Republicans entering the caucus sites found that nearly 60 percent described themselves as evangelical Christians, and by overwhelming numbers they said they intended to vote for Mr. Huckabee.

This is exactly the crowd that semi-elected Our Fearless Leader, and we’re all in trouble if they lead us down another garden path.