With this election almost two weeks behind us and shrinking quickly in our rearview mirror, here are the things we need to remember about the outcome.

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I continue to be amazed at the emotion that’s being expressed this week in light of the election of Barack Obama. There are plenty of people who are upset, frustrated, or scared. I can understand the first two, but I think fear is an inappropriate response to this week’s events.

There are also many people who are feeling a sense of pride, which I suppose I can understand. Certainly, the election of Obama is an historic moment for this country. But does Obama’s election really make America better? If we would have elected McCain instead of Obama, would we be less of a nation?

Let me step back for a moment. I grew up in a middle class suburb in so-called middle America in the 1980s and 1990s. I fully understand that racism still exists in this world, both in a personal sense and in an institutional sense. But, for me, I grew up in a world in which race wasn’t an issue. I grew up around people of all kinds of races — black, white, Asian, Latino. I went to school with kids of all races. The top 10 graduates in my high school class included students of Filipino, Chinese, Indian, African, and European ethnicities. I’ve never thought of people in terms of their race.

I grew up in a world where I was fully confident that I’d see an African-American president in my lifetime. It wasn’t a matter of if, it was a matter of when. I was certain that it would be relatively soon, too. I can remember Jesse Jackson’s campaigns in 1984 and 1988, respectively. I remember seeing Carol Mosley Braun become a U.S. Senator in Illinois and go on to run for president. I’ve voted for Alan Keyes twice for two different offices.

Would we have felt less proud of America if we hadn’t elected Barack Obama on Tuesday? I hope not. I didn’t vote against Obama because of his race. His race has never been an issue to me. He’s clearly an intelligent, skillful, authentic politician who has well-intentioned ideas about how he thinks America should look. None of those things are in any way tied to his race. I voted against him because I thought his opponent would make for a better candidate. Why would that choice have made America any less proud of itself?

I actually find that kind of insulting. To suggest that unless we elected this man as the first black president that somehow America would have remain tainted by institutional racism is absurd.

Have we now exorcised the demons of racism in our country? Can we now move on? Am I allowed to shed my “white guilt”? Will African-Americans now begin to fully recognize the blessings of liberty?

Let’s be realistic. A lot of people feel good about this election. And I hope that Obama has a presidency that truly leaves America a better nation. But with that said, there’s a very good chance that Obama will have mixed success. Despite his promises, he’ll have a fair number of setbacks and failures. His best intentions won’t be sufficient to make the kind of change that he’s talked so much about … and that’s okay.

I don’t feel any better or worse about America or myself after the election. I’m glad we live in a country that allows anyone to become president. I’m glad that we have a peaceful transfer of power. I’m glad that my sense of personal and national identity isn’t tied up in a candidates’ race.

I grew up knowing Ronald Reagan as the president. My lasting impression was that our president believed that America was an exceptional nation that has been given a special opportunity to bring freedom and hope to the world. That’s how I will forever look at Reagan.

My sons will grow up with Barack Obama as their model for what a president is. My hope is that their impression of Obama will have nothing to with him being African-American. I hope that they will see a man who sees American much as I remember Reagan seeing America.

That felt like the longest presidential campaign in the history of presidential campaigns. It literally started right after the 2006 mid-term elections and culminated on Tuesday night.

I’m still recovering from working 35 of the first 57 hours of this week. But I’m starting to wrap my brain around what the election means or will mean, now that the task of governing begins.

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After two debates, I’m starting to wonder if, perhaps, we’ve reached a point in our national political experience that we ought to consider doing away with the style of debates that we’ve grown accustomed to.

I understand why these kinds of traditional debates were important in the nineteenth and even early to mid twentieth century, when we did not have the transportation or media technology that would allow for large numbers of voters to see or hear from candidates. Debates provided a great opportunity for candidates to get together in front of voters and talk about the issues.

However, in today’s world, the whole project has become something of a farce. A true debate, in the academic sense as they are held in colleges across the country, is less about the style and more about the substance. Anyone who has ever watched or participated in a Lincoln-Douglas or CEDA style debate knows that the goal is to have both better evidence and better arguments than your opponent. There are rules and strategies for competing. There are judges who score the debate to determine an actual winner.

Presidential debates have become media spectacles. What has anyone learned from watching the first two debates? Not much, I’d argue. Everyone has already seen and heard Obama, McCain, Biden, and Palin ad nauseum. If we don’t know what Obama thinks about health care or what John McCain thinks about the war in Iraq at this point, then we’re just not paying attention. In the age of cable news, the Internet, and YouTube, you can follow every word the candidates say if you choose.

The debates aren’t about issues at all, because if they were, that would require both the candidates and the moderator to have a much better grasp on the facts. In a real debate, Biden couldn’t have made the ridiculous claim that the U.S. and France kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Or that the U.S. has spent more in Iraq in a month than in Afghanistan in seven years. Or that Article 1 of the Constitution has anything to do with the Vice President’s role in the executive branch.

I actually think that the style that Rick Warren used at Saddleback is a better set-up than we’ve seen so far. I like the one-on-one style of moderator and candidate sitting across from each other. I would add a panel of “fact checkers” who could listen to each candidate’s answers, and then offer rebuttals or ask for clarification when something less than truthful is said. It’s something to consider.

RealLivePreacher was equally unimperssed by the debate this week, and offers a much more user-intensive approach to choosing your candidate.

1. The television political experts are creating their own reality. Listen to them if you wish, but do not give them much authority.

2. Choose your top issues and concentrate on those.

3. Bring the best of your intellect and experience to the table. That’s all that is required of you.

This video of Jonathan Haidt giving a TED Talk is a fascinating approach to understanding the differences between liberals and conservatives.

I must admit an ignorance to the field of “moral psychology”, but this video offers a nice starting point.

If you can sit through 18 minutes, I’d be curious to hear your reaction to what he has to say. Personally, I think he cops out at the end without really offering a conclusion that makes any sense, but that’s just my opinion.

I have become a fan of Merlin Mann more and more in recent months. His Inbox Zero presentation should be required viewing for just about anybody who uses e-mail in a business setting today.

I just saw his How to Blog presentation, and it’s worth spending some time with, even if you don’t consider yourself a blogger. Anyone who is involved with any type of social media — blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. — would benefit from watching this thing. It’s a little long, so if you have a limited attention span, you’ve been warned.

Lawrence Lessig put together a very nice analysis of Sarah Palin’s experience as a qualification for her candidacy for the vice presidency. It’s about 12 minutes, and you can watch it below.

I think this is a very fair treatment of the facts. Unlike so many Democrats and Obama supporters, Lessig deals with facts and not emotions. Rather than wasting time talking about Palin’s personal life or her role in some larger cultural narrative about feminism or whatever other tactic they have employed, Lessig asks a couple of simple questions:

1. How does Sarah Palin’s experience stack up against previous vice presidents’ experience?
2. Does her relative lack of experience and the 20% chance that she may be called upon to serve as president thereby disqualify her candidacy?

Lessig does a nice job running through the experience of 46 vice presidents and concluding that, with the exception of two, Palin is the least qualified.

He then concludes that because nine of the 46 vice presidents have been called upon to serve as president (and the likelihood that McCain as the oldest president with prior health problems would raise the odds of Palin succeeding him), and because of the looming financial crisis, multiple wars, and global warming, Palin would not be a fit president.

Fair enough. I think that’s a strong argument. But I do think that there are some further questions that ought to be asked before this conclusion can be met with any certainty.

The question of experience is an important one. It’s generally assumed that a person with extensive experience makes for a better president or vice president. But is that true? Lessig fails to take that next step and actually show a link between experience and performance in the office.

There have been plenty of very experienced men who have been terrible presidents and vice presidents. In fact some of the most experienced men have been mediocre or miserable chief executives. George H.W. Bush comes to mind as an emminently qualified vice president and president whose tenure was marked by very little substantive accomplishment. Richard Nixon was another incredibly qualified candidate whose record will forever be tainted by terrible decisions.

Is there a correlation between experience for an office and performance in that office? If so, how close are the two related? In recent memory, we’ve had several presidents who came into office with limited, but comparable, executive experience (Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush), none of it at the federal level. How did they fare?

At the same time, we ought to apply this same test to Barack Obama. Republicans have spent a lot of time pointing out his lack of executive experience. Does it matter? If it matters for Palin, should it also apply to Obama?

I think this is a good discussion to have, and I’m glad somone is approaching it from this perspective.