I bought the novel A Reliable Wife. I told my wife it’s a how-to manual.
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I keep getting Facebook friend requests from really good-looking young women. I’m sure it’s not a scam. I’m sure it must be my Blogen-peal.
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My teenage daughter gets a job. She gets money. I get to be her car service. Gee, this worked out great.
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I talk a lot, often to people I don’t know (perhaps because people I know are tired of talking to me.) I can’t remember a time when people were so angry — in a non-partisan way — at Washington. People are convinced that members of Congress, especially, have no clue how to fix the economy and aren’t telling the public the truth.
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Regular visitors to Blogenberg know that the blogosphere revolves around Blogenberg. A couple weeks ago I reported on a very cool new award program for young social entrepreneurs (disclosure: it’s run by The Hitachi Foundation, a client). Check this out at Inc.com.
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Yesterday, I hopped into a taxi at the Nashville airport. On the dashboard, a photo of a beautiful one-year-old girl was taped. I asked the driver if that was his daughter. We started talking. He asked where I was from. I told him, Washington, DC.

He asked how the economy was in Washington. I told him, better, but still bad. He said Nashville was the same, that he had lost his job in manufacturing and was now driving a cab full-time. He said he doesn’t think Washington, DC has what it takes any more to fix the crisis.

“I don’t think the men and women in Congress care about America,” he said. “When I came to this country 17 years ago from Ethiopia, people in Congress cared about this country. They were Republicans and Democrats, but they worked together to help the country because they love this country. Now, they don’t care about America. All they care about is fighting with each other. All they care about is winning elections. They don’t care about America.

“That is why 3rd world countries never get better. The leaders are always fighting, trying to get power from each other. But they don’t take care of the country.”

Could I suggest that this headline, from today’s Wall Street Journal, is a bit scary: “Palin Addresses Asian Investors.”

It’s hard watching from the outside, not being inside. I’ve had one job in one administration — nothing important, but it was exciting. I was offered two important jobs — one of them at the very beginning of another administration — neither of which I could accept. So I know what it’s like to be involved, no matter how tangentially, in the building of a new administration.

I know what it’s like to be wandering the White House, get lost, go to open a door, and an armed agent, literally out of nowhere, stop me to say that the door I was about to open would be the Oval Office. I know the heady feeling of being in the office late at night, the vast majority of government workers gone home, working on a speech or a policy directive.

What the brand new members of the Obama administration are doing right now is having a lot of fun. I can’t help but feel like the little boy looking at the puppy behind the storefront window.

President Obama. Pray for him.

We are not at the revolution. We are at the Obama presidency.

One noted television anchor today compared the streets of Washington, DC to the streets of an Eastern European city after the fall of a dictator. This noted anchor will never get the irony — that’s an insult to President Obama. He’s a brilliant politician (and that, to me, is high praise). He’s not a revolutionary.

Pray for President Obama. He’s earned it. But attach anything more to him, other than a man who has earned the opportunity to lead us, and we throw barbed wire at his feet.

At a party last night, I was asked what I think will happen over the next year. My answer was, “I will pray a lot. And I mean that as nothing but the highest compliment to our incoming president.”

I may be the first biographer of the Bush presidency. Reader’s Digest paid me to write George W. Bush: A Heroic First Year. It was one of those quickie books published just months after 9-11. I did not interview the president, but I did interview people who worked closely with him and people who were with him at historic moments — the teacher of the classroom where he was reading to school children when he got the news of the attacks, the retired fireman who famously stood with him on a pile of rubble (actually a buried fire truck) at ground zero. It all moved me to do some of my best writing (after reading the draft, my editor called and said, “If you were a woman, I’d have sex with you.”)

I had supported his candidacy and really came to like the man albeit from a distance. But I became disillusioned with his presidency. For me, like so many, it was Katrina. In the aftermath of 9-11, the Bush White House understood leadership. In the aftermath of Katrina, they forgot. Many, most, perhaps all, on my wife’s side of the family were certain that, if it were white people stranded on that overpass in New Orleans, the government would have rescued them. I could not argue, and wondered the same thing — how could we feel different when the best the White House could do was to release a photo of the president, his face pressed against the window of Air Force One, looking down at the destroyed city.

People I know who work with President Bush report he remains a decent, intelligent man. I have no doubt. And only history will tell us whether this is a successful or failed presidency. But what feels clear to me today is that somehow the White House got separated from the decent, intelligent man.

I have no doubt this is a true story, rather than simply apocryphal, as the source is somebody I’ve known and trusted for years. My friend worked tirelessly for the Obama campaign. On the last weekend of the campaign, a colleague was calling voters in a southern state. Obama volunteer on phone: Have you decided who you will be voting for? Elderly woman on other end of the phone, yelling to her husband: Honey, who are we voting for? Husband, yelling back, overhead by the Obama volunteer: We’re voting for the n—–.

The most offensive marketing letter in history: I received a letter from a consulting firm. It starts, “Dear Mr. Rosenberg, How do you stop incest at Rosenberg Communications?”

Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be caricatures: I was at a gas station in Chevy Chase, MD. A Land Rover pulls up next to me. Out steps a 40-year-old-or-so guy wearing a tan Land’s End coat, jeans that cost way too much for jeans, and Crocs on his feet. If a cartoonist had drawn the stereotype of a man and his vehicle from the wealthy enclave of Chevy Chase, MD, that cartoon had just pulled up next to me. Here’s a tip for all men, and aspiring men — don’t be a caricature.

Blogenberg had nothing to say yesterday and last night, the regular Blogenberg posting time. Blogenberg voted (no lines at 7 pm), sat in the front of the TV to watch the results, and could think of nothing to say. What happened — a landslide for a black man — is so distant from the country I grew up in, that I didn’t know what to say.

I grew up when the “n” word was common lingo. Race fights were the norm in my schools. One student was arrested with a gun in his locker. Getting older, dating my now wife, a West Indian woman, we would get stared at on occasion. Just 15 years ago, the KKK had a car in the city fair just 20 minutes up the road.

All I can say is that I was speechless at the revolution.

From a policy perspective, I’m not sure what I think of an Obama presidency. But watching and listening to two of my kids, both 14, one of whom identifies himself as black, the other who identifies herself as bi-racial, I can tell that the impact is significant. The fact that a black man is on the verge of becoming president is speaking to them. It’s expanding what the future looks like in a country I’ve always loved. It’s talking to them about their place in the United States — their place in what came before them, their place in what is before them.

Though they are young, they understand the movement of time, from a country that once bred and tolerated evil in its race relations, to today, when a black man will, barring an electoral earthquake, become president. (If you think I am too loosely using the word evil, read Diane McWhorter’s Carry Me Home – mandatory reading for all Americans.)

As a father, whatever an Obama presidency may or may not do to my taxes, may or may not do to healthcare, I can say this: it will change how at least two of my children view where and how they fit in this country.

Yesterday, I did something I’ve never done before. I gave a significant contribution to a Democratic presidential candidate. (Blogenberg is a Blogen-publican.) Last night, I explained to my wife and two 14-year-olds:

Me: Well, one, I know that you [my wife] and the two of you are strong supporters of Obama. And, look, while there are certainly things about a possible President Obama that concern me, as the head of this household, it is meaningful to me, and to you guys, that an African American has reached the point where he could become President.

My 14-year-old son [in all seriousness]: I didn’t know you were the head of this household.

(For my fellow Blogen-publicans — some of whom will be mad at me — don’t worry I continue to give money to our party.)