[Sorry, TG. I feel like I might be stepping on your toes with this one. I promise there's some reproductive stuff at the end]

Republicans have decided to stop picking on Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and start carping specifically at the president. House Minority Leader John “Best Last Name Ever” Boehner indicated that a “triangulation” of Democratic power players Pelosi and Reid and the President does not exist. “It's the president's budget,” Boehner said. “His name is on it.” Concurrently, the carnivorous British press eviscerated the Obama family for their bad gift etiquette.

While I don’t wholly agree with the target of Boehner’s critical aim and I certainly don’t approve of (but am consistently entertained by) the habits of the British press corps, I do agree with what this kind of attention and information implies about Barack Obama. Since he’s been elected, I’ve been sick with worry about being let down. Because even though Hilary Clinton’s famous rant during the campaign was derisive of the very people who would have likely voted for her had she been the Democratic candidate, it was spot on. She said of people’s expectations of an Obama victory (or of what she perceived to be the Obama campaign’s psychologically manipulative invention of what the expectations of would-be Obama-voters), “the heavens will open and the clouds will part and celestial choirs will sing and there will be light.” It was a pretty snarky comment, and it made me like Clinton more. Not only did she provide and entertaining, quotable and recognizable quip, she employed a method of description that is very current, very blog-like. By evoking vague cinematic imagery pretty much generic to every epic movie made about God in the fifties and sixties, and again referenced in more recent comedies like Bruce Almighty, Clinton effectively employed a pop culture reference that any American would recognize. She also inadvertently compared Obama to God, or at least pointed out that he was god-like in the eyes of many. It was her version of John McCain’s Paris Hilton/Obama comparison, which was lacking in the subtlety Clinton was able to attain. I digress.

Though I think the right person won the race, I also think both Clinton and McCain were right in those assessments; during the campaign, Obama was elevated to iconic status. He seemed too good to be true. The poster child for the American Dream, which, I assumed, was no longer a viable cultural influence. What I hoped through the whole thing is that he’d be able to stay in touch with humanity while simultaneously maintaining superhuman resolve, two things a president must have and two things our former president never came close to achieving.

George W. Bush sucked. He made me miserable, ashamed, angry. He was the opposite of the American Dream. He was American royalty with blue-blooded hypocrisy coursing through his veins. He had a combined SAT score of 1206 which would most likely condemn a student as bumblingly average as he to rejection from Yale, but somehow he got in during a decade when the university had tightened its admission standards. There’s the whole Skull and Bones thing. His decision to pursue an MBA. Every step this guy made was along the predictable cliché, rich frat boy track. I bet he knows someone named Buffy. If he went to college in the nineties, he would now be an unemployed investment banker. Even if you disregard the evidence that while in the White House Bush never made a decision without one of these two lookers on each shoulder, it should be clear to anyone that he was at the very least unremarkable and probably unselfconfident in his decision making. The “America” that he, Rove and Cheney claimed to be such fervent and prideful patriots of does not deserve an unremarkable or unselfconfident leader.

Obama, on the other hand, is at times painfully independent, which speaks directly to his resolve. And that Boehner seems to respect him so individually in his criticism might prove that Obama is doing what he thinks is right, not what others are advising him of. I can’t think of a Democrat who made a similarly critical-yet-reverent statement about Bush (that probably has more to do with the fact that most Democrats are weak, frustrating little men). The fact the gifts the Obamas presented the British Prime Minister and his family with were—for lack of a better word—normal is not disappointing, but rather comforting. I never know what to get people either!

Obama contradicts Bush from every angle—his childhood, his ambition, his speech, his policies, his practicality (I am slightly suspicious of Obama’s obsession with exercise, the one trait he shares with Bush). And he’s already made grand steps in the way of how the government views and talks about reproductive rights, an issue on which Bush wouldn’t compromise. Obama overturned the gag order because something of its nature would never be applied in the States because it violated the first amendment, not because he wants women to have abortions. And he has just reversed the restrictions Bush placed on stem cell research, for which he was lambasted for making decisions based on a religious moral code. Obama cited “sound science” as one of the reasons for his decision to overturn the restrictions. Would he have made these controversial decisions so early had he been cautioned by the manic speculations of what I imagine to be West Wing-esque advisors?

It’s hard to nail down just exactly how a man can be a walking set of contradictions and also be successful, but I guess Obama just has the right contradictions: humility and pride, qualities that are as relatable as they are admirable, practicality and idealism.