And with Obama, at last we are confronting global warming.

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, so hammering companies that emit the stuff hardly is "confronting global warming" -- especially when the human role in the current warming trend is, at best, ambiguous. What's more, if carbon dioxide is so pernicious and Obama is so effective, how is it that he flat-out failed to get China -- the globe's pre-eminent producer of carbon dioxide -- to agree to curb its emissions?

Well, at least, after Bush, Obama is not divisive.

The leftist Pew Research Center, in a survey, found Obama "has the most polarized early job approval (rating) of any president" in its 40 years of polling -- with a 61-point difference between Democrats who approve his performance (88 percent of them) and Republicans who approve it (just 27 percent). So much for Obama as a bipartisan, post-partisan, non-polarizing unifier.

OK. OK. Yet Obama speaks movingly about a "new era of responsibility."

Yes indeed, he can talk a very good game. He's exceptional at paying lip service. Still, there's often a disconnect -- a chasm -- between what he says and what he does.

Maybe it only seems that way because he wasn't present at the creation of the mess Bush left him to clean up. Obama arrived in the middle of a recession and a public debt burden of 40 percent of GDP.

Not a good thing. But how is it commendable for him to double that debt burden -- to 80 percent of GDP -- in 10 years, even in the name of straightening things up? In fact, Obama's deficit spending proposals will amass in his first 20 months a deficit equaling the one Bush amassed in eight years.

Along the way, Obama will give us tax increases, defaults, devaluation and inflation. You know that. And he will create more government dependency, print more cash, reward incompetence and sloth, and beg forgiveness -- for what presumed sins? -- of both our enemies and our friends. You know that, too. Is this how he defines his "new era of responsibility"?

Give him time. And I repeat -- lay off. I am definitely not in denial.

Of course you're not. So get over the guilt you're feeling for whatever dubious reasons. And -- if you can summon the strength to do it -- put on a happy face.