I have to be perfectly honest here. I have no idea what to expect when Barack Obama takes the oath of office on January 20, 2009. But I will say this: this country is about to experience an extraordinary event. An Obama presidency will be significant not for any of his policies or accomplishments, but because of who he is.

An Obama White House is significant because he is the first president of a new generation. No longer will we have any presidents who fought in World War II or Vietnam. Obama was born in 1961. He's a 1970's kid. He grew up watching the same crap on television that I watched, and he listened to the same music. Growing up in a different era makes you a different person. There is a 15 year difference between George W. Bush (born in 1946) and Barack Obama (born in 1961). The generation gap is going to be noticeable from the outset. for one thing, Obama grew up in a time when his generation did not worship war.

When Obama was a kid, he probably never imagined that he would someday become president. He probably never thought he would enter politics. That was not the life for a black kid. As Obama began his childhood in the 1960s, this country was still profoundly racist, so much so that when President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he told his assistants that he was signing away the south for good. What he meant was that this law, which gave equal rights to blacks across the board, would create such a backlash in the southern states that they would all vote Republican from that point forward. And that is what happened. The Democratic stronghold in the south turned over almost immediately. When Johnson sought re-election that year against Barry Goldwater, the southern states for the first time in eons voted Republican. Johnson won that election in a landslide, but Republican strategists realized the significance of the southern Republican sweep. The Southern Strategy was born, and the Republican Party built itself back to power on the white backlash, regaining the presidency in 1968.

It will be hard for people my age to appreciate the significance of an Obama presidency in this light, but for people who grew up in a time when blacks had no rights at all and were treated as second-class citizens, it will be a shock to see him take the oath of office on January 20, 2009. My generation grew up with diversity programs and equal rights. Older generations will always have as their frame of reference the white backlash against civil rights. Even if older Americans have overcome the racism of their generation, I have the sense that January 20 will be a special day for them.

For liberals and leftists of my generation, however, an Obama presidency will mean something else. An intelligent president, and someone who is not inherently corrupt or venal. The 1968 presidency went to Richard Nixon, who resigned six years later as the Watergate scandal revealed his administration for what it was: a criminal enterprise, where the president spent much of his time plotting against his enemies. Watergate ushered in presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, who were not corrupt in the general sense of the word in that they did not take bribes or lie this country into war. But 1980 brought us Ronald Reagan, a vile man who promoted an authoritarian and violent foreign policy and redistributed income towards the wealthy, a policy that remains with us to this day. Reagan should have been impeached after the Iran-contra scandal revealed that his administration was sending money to a terrorist army in Nicaragua in violation of American law. He was replaced in 1989 by George H.W. Bush, the father of the current president, a little man who extended the Reagan administration by another four years and rejoiced in promoting more violence around the world, particularly in Panama and Iraq as he held firm in the belief that a successful presidency is one that wins a few wars.

When I voted in 1992 for Bill Clinton, most people I knew felt good about it. Clinton was not a Republican and he was a baby-boomer who did not hate black people and came of age through the 1960's. But no one had any illusions about Clinton. He was a centrist, and he seemed to go out of his way to accommodate Republican ideas. That's how he got re-elected in 1996. Even Clinton's most ardent defenders, though, admit that he fudged the truth, which got him impeached in 1998. Clinton was not as bad as Reagan and Nixon, and his lies were about sex, not war and peace, but the backlash helped bring George W. Bush to the presidency in 2000.

Contrast George W. Bush with Barack Obama. George W. is an imbecile, an incurious man who has no capacity for self-reflection and carries with him the macho bullshit approach that refuses to admit mistakes and kills over 4,000 American soldiers who died fighting Bush's illegal war in Iraq which rages on in its sixth year as of March 2009. Here is what some of Bush's former associates say about him now in an oral history published recently by Vanity Fair magazine:

Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell: We had this confluence of characters—and I use that term very carefully—that included people like Powell, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, and so forth, which allowed one perception to be “the dream team.” It allowed everybody to believe that this Sarah Palin–like president—because, let’s face it, that’s what he was—was going to be protected by this national-security elite, tested in the cauldrons of fire. What in effect happened was that a very astute, probably the most astute, bureaucratic entrepreneur I’ve ever run into in my life became the vice president of the United States.

He became vice president well before George Bush picked him. And he began to manipulate things from that point on, knowing that he was going to be able to convince this guy to pick him, knowing that he was then going to be able to wade into the vacuums that existed around George Bush—personality vacuum, character vacuum, details vacuum, experience vacuum.

Richard Clarke, chief White House counterterrorism adviser: We had a couple of meetings with the president, and there were detailed discussions and briefings on cyber-security and often terrorism, and on a classified program. With the cyber-security meeting, he seemed—I was disturbed because he seemed to be trying to impress us, the people who were briefing him. It was as though he wanted these experts, these White House staff guys who had been around for a long time before he got there—didn’t want them buying the rumor that he wasn’t too bright. He was trying—sort of overly trying—to show that he could ask good questions, and kind of yukking it up with Cheney.

The contrast with having briefed his father and Clinton and Gore was so marked. And to be told, frankly, early in the administration, by Condi Rice and [her deputy] Steve Hadley, you know, Don’t give the president a lot of long memos, he’s not a big reader—well, shit. I mean, the president of the United States is not a big reader?

Richard Clarke: That night, on 9/11, Rumsfeld came over and the others, and the president finally got back, and we had a meeting. And Rumsfeld said, You know, we’ve got to do Iraq, and everyone looked at him—at least I looked at him and Powell looked at him—like, What the hell are you talking about? And he said—I’ll never forget this—There just aren’t enough targets in Afghanistan. We need to bomb something else to prove that we’re, you know, big and strong and not going to be pushed around by these kind of attacks.

And I made the point certainly that night, and I think Powell acknowledged it, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. That didn’t seem to faze Rumsfeld in the least.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. It really didn’t, because from the first weeks of the administration they were talking about Iraq. I just found it a little disgusting that they were talking about it while the bodies were still burning in the Pentagon and at the World Trade Center.

This is a long oral history, with the usual nonsense from Bush admirers about his firm leadership. The excerpts above are from people far more substantial than some press spokesman, however. The consensus among people who are really paying attention is that Bush was in way over his head as president. Bush is an idiot. Don't believe that garbage that he is stupid like a fox. He is just stupid, and we will be paying the price for the Bush presidency for the rest of our lives.

What makes an Obama presidency significant is the stark contrast between Bush and Obama. Prior presidential transitions were much more seamless. Nixon led to Ford led to Carter, followed by Reagan, then Bush I then Clinton. These people had more in common than we think. Each was an establishment man who worked his way through the system in predictable ways. Obama seems different. A lot smarter than Bush, not corrupt as far as anyone can reasonably tell, and intent on picking up the pieces. That's good enough for me.

President Bush made many of us radicals. Normally staid and "responsible" people came to hate President Bush and use harsh language in criticizing his administration. My local newspaper, the Kingston Daily Freeman publishes in upstate New York, in a congressional district which includes one of the most liberal congressmen in the House of Representatives, Maurice Hinchey. Still, it came as a surprise to read the below editorial the other day in which the paper slammed Bush in terms normally reserved for liberal magazines like the Nation.

EDITORIAL: Bush's watch

Sunday, January 18, 2009 3:06 AM EST

IN TWO DAYS, the world will watch yet another peaceful and orderly transfer of United States executive power.

It is a spectacle that, even in mundane times, inspires a considerable sense of awe about the mechanisms of power — that “system that would run of itself” — established under the Constitution.

There is nothing mundane about the context of either this inauguration of Barack Obama or the leave-taking of George W. Bush. It promises to be riveting theater.

The incoming president has scored a historic victory, the first African-American to win election to the highest office in the land. The administration of the oath of office truly will mark a watershed moment in the nation’s tortured history of trying to realize its highest ideals.

The outgoing president leaves his nation in far, far worse shape than he found it eight tumultuous and divisive years ago.

Bush leaves the nation with two wars, one entirely of his making upon a false premise.

He presided over a disastrous government response to the dire needs of millions of its citizens in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The economy is in crisis, likely the worst shape in 80 years and still declining.

THERE’S NO dodging the responsibility for any of this. It wasn’t just a bad break that it happened on his watch. The American people hire a president to foresee threats, react ably to complex situations, extend aid when it is needed, and otherwise pilot the ship of state through all manner of the unforeseen. When the president fails to do these things, regardless of the circumstances, he has failed to do his job.

There is plenty of evidence that, prior to Sept. 11, 2001, Bush did not take the threat of al-Qaida as seriously as did President Bill Clinton.

Transition briefers noted indifference on the part of many incoming officials and, in the case of Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a distracted obsession with Iraq that would lead to further trouble down the road.

Domestic counterterrorism was demoted within the White House.

The administration bungled even the bluntest warnings of evidence of terrorist planning in August 2001 — a memo headlined and concluding that “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” and even a direct, face-to-face CIA briefing in Crawford, Texas. To that special briefing, Bush allegedly responded, “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”

That was on Bush’s watch.

From an unsteady beginning on the morning and afternoon of Sept. 11, Bush literally found his voice with firefighters and a bullhorn at Ground Zero, rallying the nation to regain its footing. The Afghanistan War, managed by the Central Intelligence Agency, was an initial, smashing success.

BUT the administration botched its opportunity to trap Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants in the rugged White Mountains of eastern Afghanistan.

The Iraq War was the result of a long-running, ideological obsession on the part of a determined and influential coterie of neo-conservatives within the administration. The war was sold to Congress and the American people through a combination of misreading intelligence and willful dissembling. The woeful planning for the invasion and occupation of Iraq relied on a series of faulty assumptions, including that Iraqis would welcome Americans with open arms as liberators, rather than invaders. As Iraq teetered at the brink of anarchy, Bush engaged in a public relations stunt, landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier to be photographed against the background of a banner with the patently false assertion, “Mission Accomplished.”

Bush appointed Michael Brown, who lacked the requisite expertise, to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A videotape of Bush being briefed the day before the Hurricane Katrina disaster portrayed a passive chief executive who didn’t ask a single question, even though federal emergency officials had been warning for days that catastrophe was possible. The president was oblivious enough to casually assert in the fateful days immediately following the disaster that Brown was “doing a heck of a job,” while Americans were shocked at the images of their fellow citizens stranded helplessly on rooftops, pleading for help that was slow to arrive.

He institutionalized the use of torture by the United States, degrading the nation’s moral standing while quite possibly violating both federal and international law.

FINALLY, Bush was asleep at the switch as the nation’s economic well-being was gambled away on a housing bubble built on bad mortgages. The administration’s response since has been uncertain and ineffective, to say the least.

So it is that this Inauguration Day is anticipated with as much relief as anticipation. An exhausted nation is desperate to regroup under new leadership.

We don’t doubt the quality of Bush’s heart in his public service. But, really, don’t let the door bump you as you leave, Mr. President.

We are too hung up on abortion to allow for a straight pro-choice policy that transfers from one presidential administration to the next. So, every time the presidency changes hands from one political party to another, the President changes policy on international funding for abortion. It's one of the few direct ways that the President can directly affect abortion policy, and if he can only do so in the international arena, so be it.

As Reuters reported this week,

President Barack Obama on Friday lifted restrictions on U.S. government funding for groups that provide abortion services or counseling abroad, reversing a policy of his Republican predecessor George W. Bush.

The Democratic president's decision was a victory for advocates of abortion rights on an issue that in recent years has become a tit-for-tat policy change each time the White House shifts from one party to the other.

When the ban was in place, no U.S. government funding for family planning services could be given to clinics or groups that offered abortion services or counseling in other countries, even if the funds for those activities came from non-U.S. government sources.

This nonsense began under President Reagan, when he restricted international funding for abortion. It changed when Bill Clinton became President, and it changed over again when George W. Bush wandered into the White House. What makes these policy changes even more significant is that a new President takes the oath of office on January 20, only two days before the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, in which the Supreme Court in 1973 ruled that the Constitution protects the right to abortion.

If you don't like abortion, don't have one. That's what I always say. That's also what the bumper stickers say. But the abortion issue goes beyond mere choice. We can say for sure that the controversial Roe v. Wade decision is safe for the time being. The Supreme Court declined to overrule it in 1992, when Republican justices on the Court got tired of having conservative lawyers and government officials begging the Court every few years to overturn a relatively recent precedent. The more pressing issue, then, is the rights of poor people to have an abortion.

The right to abortion does not mean the government has to pay for one. In the 1970's, after the Supreme Court issued Roe v. Wade, right-wing politicians decided to chip away at abortion rights by retricting government funding for them. As the fault line in American politics separates rich and poor, the policy against government-funded abortions had the effect of overruling Roe v. Wade for indigent people who cannot otherwise afford them.

The Supreme Court upheld the government's right to take abortion away from poor people, in a decision that should be as notorious as Roe v. Wade is famous. The name of that decision is Harris v, McRae. Apart from deciding that this funding restriction was not a true restriction on the right to abortion, the reason the Supreme Court upheld the policy, despite the constitutional right to abortion, is that the Supreme Court has never ruled that it is illegal for the government to discriminate against poor people. Although the Court has been progressive on the issue of equal rights for blacks, women and other minorities, it has never extended that policy to the indigent, who continue to get the crap kicked out of them on a regular basis without any constitutional guarantees in their favor.

Few Supreme Court justices actually represented poor people when they were lawyers. One justice who did was Thurgood Marshall, who write in dissent from the Harris v. McRae decision that "If abortion is medically necessary and a funded abortion is unavailable, [poor citizens] must resort to back-alley butchers, attempt to induce an abortion themselves by crude and dangerous methods, or suffer the serious medical consequences of attempting to carry the fetus to term. Because legal abortion is not a realistic option for such women, the predictable result of the Hyde Amendment will be a significant increase in the number of poor women who will die or suffer significant health damage because of an inability to procure necessary medical services."

In many ways, the fight over abortion rights is a rich man's game. For the poor folk, the right was taken away a long time ago. If President Obama really wants to do something dramatic, he'd tell Congress to fund abortions for anyone who wants one. It's clear that we as a country are moving further and further away from racial discrimination. But discrimination against the poor remains with us to this day.