It’s an hour of hope. Yet you don’t seem especially hopeful about the grim gray economic scene or the ability of the new administration—and the stimulus package—to give it color. Good observation. Though hope never dies, a large hunk of hope went out with the lights. But there’s a rarefied ethical atmosphere in Washington now, and surely the trillion-dollar package Congress is bestowing will make everything economically right. A new day is coming. I can see it now . . .

Before they recede too far into the rear-view mirror, quotations sublime and ridiculous from the political game . . . President Barack Obama, immediately following his election to the Senate in 2004: “I can unequivo cally say I will not be running for national office in four years . . . .I am a believer in knowing what you’re doing when you apply for a job, and I think that if I were to seriously consider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now, before having served a day in the Senate. There may be some who are comfortable with doing that, but I’m not one of those people.“

In the contemporary environment of all Obama all the time, who does not know that come Tuesday the nation will have a new president? Barack Obama arrives at the presidency bearing the goodwill of many (including your correspondent) and the messianic hopes of many more. The latter group has elevated him above criticism. Jesse Jackson sees in him “theological qualities.“ Congressman Bobby Rush, who once opposed him, regards his election as part of God’s plan. A press that Obama does not particularly like accords him a reverence comparable only to media adulation of JFK.

The left and the media and the ever-expanding blogosphere, and of course the Democrats, never permitted George Bush to recover from the circumstances of his 2000 election. They deemed him unacceptable, accidental, illegitimate, likely a conniver in the national outcome—and so took to lobbing their hateful commentaries one after another without end.

The Associated Press ranked Barack Obama’s political ride the top story of 2008. It wasn’t. The top story had to be the implosion of the economy—here and across the globe.

It’s Christmas time, and if you were Santa Claus—well, let’s see . . . Would you tuck something under the tree of the Obama administration now forming up ...

David Mendell, Barack Obama’s biographer, notes that regarding Chicago’s corrupt political machine, “Obama, to his credit, got through this system with very little mud on his suit.“ Still—and still. Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich now finds himself mired in an unpretty place. From wiretapped telephone conversations it seems Blago tried to auction to the highest bidder the Senate seat Obama relinquished Nov. 16 following his election to the presidency. And so—in re Obama—we come to variations on the question Howard Baker made famous about Richard Nixon in the aftermath of Watergate:

Brief comments, direct or implied, on items in the news . . . The brazen Rod Blagojevich, governor of Illinois, stands (if guilty) in a long line of corrupt Illinois pols—Otto Kerner, Dan Walker, George Ryan—all of whom did, or are doing, jail time.

Quotations on a variety of topics currently in the news . . . Barack Obama, discussing the many Clinton-era alumni he is selecting for his administration of “change”: “Understand where the vision for change comes from first and foremost. It comes from me. That’s my job . . .“

When word came by cell phone several weeks ago of John Ripley’s death, I was driving in remote Michigan and had to pull over to get things back together. Rarely do men like him come this way. John Ripley was a man’s man, a Marine’s Marine—an American’s American.