Does being elected to office erase the way one got there?

On the day after the Election, I am struck by a personal insight: perhaps you can relate. This is the first time in twenty-five years of being politically active that I have not felt the need -the duty, even- to embrace my new Commander in Chief as flawed but mine. I cannot seem to come across that crevice with this particular man.

How do I respect the President-Elect when I cannot respect how he became President-Elect? 52% of the votes does not wash from President-Elect Obama the stink of $200 in fraudulently begotten donations: untraceable, anonymous and purposely allowed to be that. His Election does not magically make good his faulty ability -or, depending on your outlook, his keenly sharpened skills- to pick for his friends the expressed enemies of his own Country? His rise does not make the truth of the lie he presented of himself: a thoughtful Christian (who happens to spend twenty-years in a hate-mongering Church), a mainstream democrat (who votes to the left of the only member of the socialist party in the House), a giver, redeemer, a healer (who lets his own Aunt live in a Boston slum while he takes campaign donations from her, and says we "are our brother's keepers" while his own half-brother lives in a hut in Kenya on $12.00 US per-year).

I respect the vote, even what I could only call this uninformed vote for President-Elect Obama but, I do not respect one vote: that of what we used to call our "News Media". More than anything, that fact, the News Media's open disregard for any form of objectivity, for any idea of vetting this man, our President-Elect is the final reason I cannot now magically see President-Elect Obama as my Commander In Chief because he was and is theirs.

I worry for my patriotism.