Was up working all night, and, as I should have been focusing on my grant, I instead kept trying to figure out just what it was that I was feeling about Obama’s victory. The historical nature of the election brought tears to my eyes – how could it not. And I am already planning a triumphul return to Belgium where I spent a year in cafes defending America against the ill-informed and un-selfaware superiority of Europeans who’ve never been here and believe us to be an incorrigibly stupid, radical and racist nation.
But those were not my primary thoughts. What I came to realize as the night went on is that, for the first time in my life (sorry Bill) I will have complete faith in the person running this country – that we have a serious person in the White House, who approaches problems the way I want them to: deliberately and creatively. He reminds me of the best and brightest of my friends and colleagues. I hadn’t really appreciated it before (his training as a lawyer distracted me) but Obama would have been a fantastic scientist. And because of that I slept soundly last night.
(OK – I would have slept soundly last night had I not been up working on a grant. Now, President Obama, about that NIH budget….)
I'm an evolutionary biologist at UC Berkeley and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. My research focuses on the evolution and population genomics of gene regulation in flies. I am also very interested in promoting various forms of open science. And most importantly, I am a Red Sox fan.
2 Comments
I completely agree. It is nice to rational person bring reason and intelligence to the position after Bush.
Barack Obama is probably going to be a great candidate, I agree, but complete faith? That’s a bit much. We still need the separation of powers, checks and balances, and public scrutiny of the Executive office as usual. He isn’t perfect, nor are all of his proposals good. Let’s not get too out of hand in our enthusiasm here…