It's not very often that I take a moment to share something of a serious note with people. As long as I can remember, the only time I've even taken the time to write a mass message was to express excitement at my engagement and my wedding, or other obvious milestones.

I had reason today — the excitement of watching Barack Obama take the oath, and become the 44th president of this great nation.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time with me knows I'm a big laugher. I'm prone to laugh at my own jokes — loud, long and hard — because I don't tell my jokes for the pleasure of my audience, I tell them for myself.

Today's excitement is different. The smile on my face is not the result of something goofy I said. And the feeling that overcame me as I listened to President Obama's speech did not only make me happy, but downright giddy.

When it comes to a topic like politics, it is my nature to expect the worst.

As Groucho Marx was quoted as saying, "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it and then misapplying the wrong remedies." I have come to agree that statement, while exaggerated, is rooted in the truth.

When President George W. Bush defeated John Kerry in 2004, I remember saying, "That figures."

President Bush was a man who did exactly what Groucho described — went looking for trouble, found it, misdiagnosed it and misapplied the wrong remedy. It was a painful day, but I had no idea that when I said "Well, at least it can't be worse," I was far from wrong. Bush's talent for always one-upping himself are unprecedented. Fortunately, this is behind us. His last term came to an end today, and not a moment too soon.

Obama's speech was monumental. It inspired dreams and hope in even someone like myself — someone who has asked many times why so many wrong-doings have gone unchecked, and bad choices and decisions have been defended without logic and good sense. Or why Bush's decisions were defended by his supporters with such illogical arguments such as, "If you don't like the President, get out of the country," or "If you disagree with the president, you're unpatriotic."

Those arguments — defended just a few years ago with such unreasoning conviction, aren't likely to be blindly presented today

I'm not fooling myself, either, to believe that Obama writes all his own speeches, completely unaided.

But what can not come from a speech-writer is the conviction of the words he speaks. The power to inspire with words that have been written on a page is entirely his. How different Obama is from former President Bush, who was unable to correctly recite the words to a simple anecdote; who read from cue cards and tele-prompters as if he had only learned the English language moments before the cameras turned on.

While today is a proud day for me, I don't intend to follow along in the same kind of blind conviction that appears to have possessed some Bush supporters.

I can not believe that I will agree with every decision President Obama makes. I believe every choice he makes will be judged by whether the decisions he makes are made with the interest of the American people in mind. That is a question that should be asked of every president.

We have a long road ahead of us, but for the first time in a long time, I am hopeful.