Some might accuse me of "it always comes back to the Clintons with you", and I suppose they might be right. I'm thinking why I'm in a congratulatory mood today, and I suppose the biggest influence is indicators that Obama is adopting much of Hillary's domestic policy, that he's getting on famously with Bill, that he relied on the Clinton economic team to ride through the rough meltdown a month ago. But it's a bit more than that.

Reports are that Obama studied up on how to approach Bill, not diving into policy but feeling him out more on his historical view, his anecdotal thoughts, a more general "what do you suggest?" Perhaps it comes from his organizing and fund raising background, hitting up local political leaders, figuring out what's their priority, their sweet spot. Whatever. It's been a long time since I've seen a politician act like they needed to study someone, to draw them out, to closely analyze a situation. Him/herself. Even with Hillary, I have a nagging curiosity as to what her campaign strategy meetings were like back in January. How come she didn't have the budget numbers at her finger tips? How come she didn't pull the information out of her advisors, how come she couldn't figure out which team leaders were struggling? Perhaps it's simply a different style, perhaps he gets it from his basketball background, but Obama as everyone knows ran a better ground game, and continues to run one - he knows the fast break, running out the clock, playing formation, fighting for the boards, throwing a few elbows, and simply controlling the game - and likely will continue to. But part of the importance to me of that ground game is he's listening - not just his advisors, not some Karl Rove or Dick Cheney that has it all in hand - but him. He's not Uncurious George. As someone (AA?) recently mentioned, one of the amazing things about Obama's organization is that he was organizing Democrats - i.e. herding the proverbial cats. With Republicans, you mention "cut taxes" or "fight terror" and they line up like penguins. With Democrats, they start to scratch each others' eyes out except for the ones who go line up with the Republicans.

So I suppose I'm now comfortable with Obama the Analytical, the questioner, the game-planner. I won't like all of his platforms, but I expect I'll like enough of them and he won't have quite as many crap positions thrown on him as he does now, and he'll have more room and power being in office with a majority to broker his own strong hand. But he knows very well that he's dealing with a still quite conservative country, and I don't think he'll be doing anything that truly surprises anyone. Which is fine by me. A modest, prudent and efficient government is pretty much what I want. No more surprises, boring but efficient bureaucracy with a modicum of out-of-the-box thinking. I don't think Obama's terribly ideological, or perhaps I think he's quite non-ideological but ideological enough. Which also protects us from the most dangerous of possibilities - someone who takes himself too seriously, too intent on forcing some hare-brained scheme down our throats, someone convinced of his own infallible nature. (Hear that, George?) Obama tasted defeat in 2000 and it improved him. (George never tasted defeat that actually touched him, and would never acknowledge it - all of his failures were bailed out by friends and family).

In some ways what I do hope for is the era of the super-efficient 50-state bean counters. I want e-government and electronic medical records and veterans benefits and policy papers and opinion polls in general peoples' voices and preferences and complaints and the various government feedback that affects them to flow like a seamless mesh, like the Bulls in their glory days. Perhaps a bit too dreamy, but Obama's ground game has been good, and it seems likely that that hyper-efficient infrastructure and approach can be applied in part to modernize governing - not just "internet" but data mining and semantic analysis and nets and Site(government)-Enabled-Optimization and click-thrus and niche markets and PayPal and Facebook. For 150 years we've been comparing the making of laws to the preparing of sausage, and perhaps it's time to shift to something more modern, more fast food drive-thru restaurant chain at its worst, something a bit lower cholesterol and lean cuisine if done better. Not everyone's cup of tea, but at some point the doctor speaks and you have to listen - a diet or government of fatty sausage is simply not healthy, no matter how much you've acquired the taste for it. Stay tuned.