The first president of the US who is . . .

I don't know who is going to win this election for President of the U. S. I'm not sure who should. But, whoever wins, I'm glad that I live in a country where I have a chance to vote.

I know, if McCain wins, we'll have the first female Vice-President. If Obama wins, we'll have the first African-American President. (Here's a list of the Presidents.) But there's more.

No President's last name ever begun with O. No Vice-President's name has ever begun with P. (Here's a list of the Vice-Presidents.)

In January, if all goes as planned after the election, we'll have the first President not named Bush or Clinton since January 1989. We'll also have the first Senator, or former Senator, elected President since Richard Nixon was elected in 1968. (Nixon did not serve his full term, but resigned, and Gerald Ford, who had served in the House of Representatives, took his place.)

No matter who wins, the Vice-President-elect will have a last name with 5 letters, and that name will end in N. We have done that before. Richard Nixon was such a Vice-President. There have been four Vice-Presidents whose last name began with B, the last being George H. W. Bush.

Senator Obama and Governor Palin both have small children. How would I go about telling such a child that I had lost an election? I have no idea, and I'm glad I haven't had to do that. There will be hundreds, maybe thousands of other candidates, for all sorts of offices, who have the same situation. Some good people will be out of jobs, have to change careers, and have to move, and their children will have to change schools in the middle of the school year, because of this election, as incumbents in all sorts of offices will be voted out, and their staff members will no longer be employed.

We often vilify politicians, and, like the rest of us, they have their faults, and some individual politicians have a lot of faults beyond that. But there are some good, hard-working, unselfish politicians, and we should be grateful for them all, even if we disagree with the ideas of some of them.

God's best to President-elect Obama, or President-elect McCain. He'll need our prayers.

Thanks for reading.