For the first time since I became old enough to vote I am excited about a presidential candidate. Despite his personal flaws, I really like Bill Clinton, and think for the most part he did a hell of a lot of good while he was in office (and still does; the stuff the Clinton Foundation does is pretty impressive).

I pretty much vote Democrat; I haven’t really seen any Republicans running for office (locally or nationally) that I ever really agreed with. There’s been a couple of (local) exceptions, but I’ve always voted Democrat in major elections.

Anyhoo, I’ve been following the media circus between Obama/Clinton the past 6 months or so. While I liked Bill, I never really connected with Hillary – in fact, I just don’t really like her all that much. Can’t really say what it is, exactly. She’s done a lot of good work in a lot of areas, but there’s some small, nagging thing that I don’t like about her. [[shrug]]

So it’s no surprise that I’m really excited that Obama is the Democratic candidate. I haven’t watched and been as excited about a candidate since (Bill) Clinton ran for re-election in 1996. There’s something (IMO) so promising about him, and I really really feel, for the firs time in a long time, that him getting elected will change the U.S. for the better.