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If Obama can forgive Lieberman, writer can forgive slapdash husband

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted Dec 6, 2008 9:02 AM CST

(Newser) – What would Obama do? Leslie Savan decided not to blast her husband for faulty dishwashing after asking herself this question, she writes in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and she's not the only person she knows who's paused in moments of fury to consider the president-elect's level-headed ways. It's "more than a tad embarrassing," she admits, but certainly a contrast from the Bush years.

"Every president's character helps define the parameters of what you can and cannot get away with," Savan writes, and having an "incompetent, no-good wastrel" running the country made her more inclined to let standards slip and not "bother to talk so good."
But "if Obama can now refuse to vilify George W. Bush, Henry Paulson and the entire GOP-enabled greed machine for destroying lives and the economy," surely we can have the guts to follow his example.

[Images (3)]

[Quotes (3)]

People walk past a painting of U.S. President- elect Barack Obama by artist Yan Pei-Ming from the Zwirner & Wirth gallery in Miami Beach, Fla. Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2008. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

President-elect Barack Obama and Secretary of State-designate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., walk out together after a news conference in Chicago, Monday, Dec. 1, 2008. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

The poster for of the campaign for President-elect Barack Obama is projected on the back wall of the Masonic Lodge Temple Building in Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008. (AP Photo/Karen Tam)

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That tall cool drink o' distilled water would never blast Michelle for a domestic faux pas like that, but here I am going ballistic because my spouse tried to clean a pan? Then poof! My anger was gone. - Leslie Savan

As long as they're on TV a lot and the media magnify their every word and deed, our leaders inevitably take up 4 or 8-year occupations of the mytho-religious space in our brains that links private behavior to public values. - Leslie Savan

A usually road-raging friend of mine tells me that recently 'someone was going too slow, and I was all ready with my F-bombs, but'—Obama news was on the radio at the time—'I stopped them.' - Leslie Savan

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Latest Rage-Reducer: WWOD?