Those of you who actually ARE cool will know, of course, who made this saying famous.  Conan O'Brien says it frequently when his audience gets a little crazy, and I thought it an appropriate comment right about now.

I've been keeping a low profile since the election; partly from exhaustion, partly from just the miraculous marvel of it all, and partly from simply observing all the hoopla going on from politicians to pundits as Obama, taking the road less traveled, has found it necessary to pull out the machete to hack his way through the tangled underbrush of the What Is He Thinking weeds, the He's Selling Out shrubs, the This Has Never Been Done Before So It Probably Won't Work plants, the So Many Strong Personalities in the West Wing Will Produce Chaos perinneals, the He's Letting Congress Push Him Around brush, and so on.

Even al Qaeda weighed in, blaming Obama for the mess in the Gaza, even though he has not yet even taken the oath of office.  Yeeeah, democracy's tough to understand for some people, I guess.

And so I just have to say to everyone:  Be cool my bebbes.  Listen to Mama.

For the past two years I've read not just Obama's books, but every major policy paper he ever wrote, as well as every speech he gave in the primaries and general election that I could find online.  I've also read the columnists and op-edders and bloggers from both sides of the aisle, from way back when they merely sneered at him to the time they realized they'd underestimated him to the time they realized his time was here, like, NOW, to their obsessive wrestling with just what and who he is and what the hell he's going to do.

It's really not that hard to figure out.  He has laid it all out, in great detail, for months now.  It's just that nobody was paying attention because we had so many more important things to concern ourselves with.

Like Jeremiah Wright.  And Bill Ayers.  And Sarah Palin.

Plus, everybody's busy.  I get that.  I have the time to read all this stuff that most people just don't have, and I'm grateful for that, but I wish that the people WHO ACTUALLY MAKE A LIVING AT THIS would have been paying just a wee bit more attention themselves.

I've also been around long enough to remember how Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn twisted arms to get landmark legislation through, like Civil Rights and Medicare, when his own party was, at the time, the party of Southern Bigots.  I've been around long enough to have seen Ronald Reagan wheedle, cajole, charm, and trick a recalcitrant Democratic congress to give him what he wanted.

I've also seen leaders such as Bill Clinton, who could have been great, but their approach was sloppy and undisciplined and their mistakes sometimes just too serious to overcome.

(For instance, letting the right-wing steal his honeymoon by cranking up the whole gays-in-the-military controversy right after he got elected, which set the tone for how he would be bullied by them when they took over in '94.)

And George W. Bush, who has not the slightest clue what it means to lead.

I mean, he plays a leader on TV.  That, he can do.  He can play the part of Andover cheerleader in the rubble with a megaphone, but he can't lead.  He has delegated his entire presidency to those stronger and more determined, from Dick Cheney to Donald Rumsfeld to Gen. Petraeus to HeckuvajobBrownie to Hank Paulsen.  Then he went off for a bike ride.

So what I'm saying is that there is an entire generation who simply does not comprehend what true national leadership looks like, and who, for that matter, has no real understanding of what GOVERNING is.

In the age of Karl Rove, we've been brainwashed to believe that anyone on the opposing side is an enemy we should hate, not an opponent we need to work with.  The word "compromise" has come to mean "selling out" or "caving in."

Obama likes to use the word "pragmatic" a lot, but I'm not sure many political watchers these days really understand what that means.

Once in every other generation or so, a true visionary will come along, one who doesn't just "see things as they should be," but sees the way things WILL be in the future and the way they CAN be with enough foresight and energy and willpower.

And the thing about a visionary is...well...nobody else sees the vision.  Not for a long time, anyway.

A few do, those who catch on early, who realize they're near that phenomenon, and who are smart enough and savvy enough to see it as well, and to help that visionary bring that vision to pass.

But the thing is...It's a messy process.

At first, most everybody will complain because their golden calf didn't get the proper worship.

Also, most people are afraid of change.  They are afraid of it in their private lives and very very afraid of it when it comes to a behemoth like the government.

So they fight.

This past campaign was as vicious as it was because Obama was running a 21st century campaign to redesign a government that would be ready for the 21st century and not the 20th.  Most people could not see it, or if they did, they did not believe it could be possible. 

Some outright feared it.

So he had to really fight just to get the opportunity to make it happen.

Now everybody's running around all anxious and worried because he's talking about, and doing things, that represent a vision he can see but they can't, even if they want to, really really badly.  Or, they see it but they don't think he's going to be able to pull it off, or maybe they see it, but they think that every time he reaches some sort of agreement with his opponents, that he has sold out, caved in, lost The Dream.

His supporters just trust him to do it, but the skeptics think that kind of trust is foolish if not downright dangerous. 

But what really amuses me is all the speculation about HOW he's going about it; the people he's picked and the changes he's making--mostly behind the scenes.  You have to be paying attention, really paying attention, to see how he intends to get things done.

What I have read, over and over again, is quotes from people who used to work for Clinton, or used to work for Bush, or used to work for Carter.

And time and again, they comment about how this is getting away from him, how he's going to be railroaded by his own people, how the strong personalities he has entrusted with these responsibilities will have their own turf and their own agendas and his plans will get stonewalled.

These comments are based on these people's experiences.

And none of them worked for a true, strong leader.

A strong leader, like say, Franklin Roosevelt, surrounded himself with his Brain Trust, and he worked in an extremely hostile environment where everything he tried to do was called socialism or fascism by his enemies and opposed by his friends because they'd never seen it done before.

In Lincoln's Cabinet, there were stong personalities who vigorously tried to undermine him for their own political ambitions, and it appeared to those who were not paying that much attention that they were getting away with it.

During the Cuban Missile Crises, Kennedy's own military advisors--to a man--urged him to go to war with Russia over the missiles.  One admiral even tried to go behind his back, without authorization.  They all thought he was crazy-weak.

In all these cases, these men were furiously criticized both within and without their administrations, but because they understood the true nature of leadership, they were able to accomplish extraordinary, historic things after all.

They had clear visions; they did not fear opposing points of view from advisors; they reached out to the best minds available to them; and no matter what anybody said, they remained true to what they had set out to do.

Yes, current events can mold and shape an administration.  Lincoln wasn't sure about emancipating the slaves at the beginning of the war and did it, at the end, against every advisor he had.

And yes, of course, they all made mistakes.  FDR overstepped his bounds when he tried to overhaul the Supreme Court to keep it from ruling against the New Deal programs.  Kennedy fell into the Bay of Pigs.  Lincoln put up with obstructionist generals for far too long.

But overall, their accomplishments far outweighed their mis-steps.

What Obama's detractors need to understand is that he and his people have been studying the workings of past administrations, past Congresses, and history itself to see what has worked and has not worked, and they have put together some extraordinary ideas for how to make this administration a successful one.  They were working on this long before he received the nomination.

Detractors would call that hubris.  But a visionary ACTS on that vision long before it starts to come true.  For Obama, it was simple pragmatism.  On the one hand, he would do everything in his power to win the nomination and election, and on the other hand, he would begin to prepare for the eventuality that he WOULD win, so that he would be ready, as Hillary famously said, from Day One.

I have many many links to many articles that would lay out these steps that the Obama team is making.  They are very exciting and quite thorough.

I'm not going to do that with this post because my kids only just got in this week for our Christmas celebrations, and I don't want to spend their rare time at home hunched over the computer.

But I have been accumulating a file of material, and after this weekend, I'll start putting together for you links that will show you the breadth, depth, and reach of the plans of this new administration to work dramatic--and lasting--changes to streamline and modernize our government and to accomplish what will come to look, in time, miraculous.

It won't be, though.

It will just be true leadership.

So be cool, my bebbes.  Enjoy the Inauguration.  Then buckle your seatbelts, because it will be a wild, but very satisfying, ride.