Here we are. It’s been a week, and it still doesn’t feel like it’s real. For once, we’ve elected one of us as President.

When I say one of us, I don’t mean a Democrat, I don’t mean a Chicago resident, I don’t even mean a person of color. I mean a person who talks like a normal human being. Who acts like a normal human being. Someone who sticks to his principles, Who has ideas and then follows through with them.

Someone who can use email.

Someone who promised to focus on the environment, health care, and who wants to end the war. Now that he’s elected, have these priorities changed? No.

He hasn’t begun to serve office yet, but there is a palatable feeling in the air. A feeling that for once, we don’t have a power hungry smooth talking shell of a human being running things. Clinton was a great politician and a great president, but I never felt like he was telling us all he knew. He never seemed to be genuine, and even though he accomplished great things, he never felt like he was on the level.

To me at least, Obama does.

The man looks ahead. He knows that we can’t solve problems by the same old strategies and failures. That doesn’t mean that everything he does will work, or even be right. I’m sure at some point, he will make a decision that I feel is wrong. But that’s okay, because I think he is a good person, and he will make the choices that seem to him to be the right ones.

I’ve never met him or his family before, but a number of people I know have (since we both lived in the same city– although now I live out west and he’s about to move into a big white house in the east). Everyone who met him did so before he ran for the Senate and all of them have said how nice he and Michelle are, and how genuine.

I’m proud to have him serve as the next President. I’m proud to have voted for him, and I’m proud of my fellow Americans for doing the same.

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The first sign of new things to come? Obama made the weekly Democratic radio address on Saturday– and broadcast it on YouTube too.

That’s what I’m talking about.