The Obama White House

I have just one thing to say about the decisions Obama will be making during the transition from the Bush Administration to the Obama administration: I don't care about the dog.

I mean, I really don't care about the dog even a little tiny bit.

It's pretty much guaranteed that Obama's administration is going to be big in the history of the United States of America. Even if we didn't live in interesting times, his administration would be notable because of his ethnicity, and any decision made during his administration regarding civil rights will be viewed through that lens.

But we do live in interesting times. Obama's decisions regarding the economy, regarding the middle east, and regarding a newly resurgent Russia are going to be huge, and they're going to affect the entire world. These are big, important decisions.

You know what's a relatively unimportant decision? What type of dog the family gets.

It will be important to them, and sure if it's a shelter dog then it will have some symbolic value, but personally I just don't care.

I am just insulted, though, that when I turn on the TV to get a news update I find that a surprising amount of the news hour is devoted to talking heads debating the finer points of dog breeds, which ones are hypoallergenic, how available they are as shelter dogs, and the question of how safe a shelter dog will be for the girls.

Don't we have anything better to talk about? Isn't there something, you know, newsworthy going on?

Oh, and I don't care what Michelle is going to wear to the inauguration, and I care about what school the girls will attend only slightly more than I care about the dog, which is to say: Not much.

Really, all of these things should be private to the family, and they only matter a tiny bit on a symbolic level.

Yes, presidents can do huge things, symbolically. Only Nixon could go to China, and all that. Maybe Obama will go to Iran. I don't know. The point is that there's a difference between what the president does as president (or, in this case, what the president-elect does as president-elect) and what the president's family do as a family. Personally, I'd like to hear more about what the president-elect is doing to prepare his administration for the challenges ahead.

Media: Please shut up about the dog.