1. Wouldn’t give up the Blackberry.

2. Looks at his wife when she speaks and appears interested in what she is saying.

3. Made two real cute kids.

4. The way he walks.

5. Doesn’t wear a jacket and tie to walk across the White House lawn to Air Force One.

6.  Uses “the google” better than his predecessor.

7. He’s not G.W. , submitted by Marc.

8. He picked a Syracuse University alum to be his Vice President, submitted by Denise, an S.U. alum.

9. Picks Republicans for his Cabinet, submitted by MAMACH

10.  Comics find him harder to parody than his predecessor., MAMACH

The last four are up for grabs.  I’ll use the best responses.   Tomorrow we’ll do the reasons not to love him.

Update: Thanks to all the posters who submitted ideas!

It’s satisfying to see a U.S. President who publicly admits his mistakes, but it’s disappointing to see how he does it.  The word “screw” does not belong in any Presidential speak.  In referring to his two failed Cabinet appointments, President Obama went on several network television programs and said on each one “I screwed up”.   Mr. President, you are a brilliant and classy guy.  Please sound like it.

The dictionary offers several definitions of screw as a verb: to fasten or tighten, to undo by turning as with a bottle top, to contort by twisting, to extract or extort, to threaten, to have sexual intercourse with.  When people today say “I screwed up”, they are referencing the latter, though I’m convinced few people know it.

Because profanity has found it’s way into song lyrics, film and school buses, ordinary slang no longer sounds so bad.  All things being relative, words like screw, lousy, stupid and suck seem charming.  But they really make the user sound stupid, pardon my slang.

One of our local newscasters was accused in an online forum of saying the word “pissed” on the air.   Whether or not Dan Cummings really used the word was second to the controversy that followed over use of the word itself.  Half of the posters thought pissed is a fine word, the other half did not.

To me, it speaks to education in the home.   As a child if I used slang, I got punished.  I can’t imagine what would have happened if I was caught actually swearing.  “Lousy” was bad enough.   It’s why I’m so judgmental when I hear well-educated professionals inserting slang as if it’s acceptable.   I wonder, where was the good parenting?  And will these people drop the ball as parents themselves, perpetuating the problem until ugly words like these fail to raise the hair on the back of anyone?

Politicians and newscasters speak on camera to an audience of millions every day.  If anyone has the opportunity to set an example of proper English, it is they.  Let’s hope Michelle Obama takes her open-minded husband to task over the word “screw”, and viewers chide news anchors to do better when they slip.

I mentioned a few slang words that don’t belong in an intelligent conversation.  Let’s hear more.  If people don’t respond to this challenge of mine, I swear, I’ll be pissed.

President Obama is famously reversing many policies of the Bush administration; closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay and funding global reproductive health programs, among others.

But he quietly changed something else within the first week of his Presidency which affects the people who work for him and in a broader sense, the rest of us in some way.  He relaxed the White House dress code, which to me says less about clothing and more about the hypocrisy of Number 43.

I read about the dress code adjustment in the New York Times, which also recently offered a fascinating item about the former White House photographers.  Three of them had been invited to show their favorite photographs from the Bush years and one photo in particular stuck with me.

Aware that President Bush once scolded a White House staffer for reporting for work on a Saturday in khakis and a button down shirt, the photo in question made me angry.

It was taken at the end of a long dirt road outside the President’s ranch in Crawford, Texas.  There had been a summit of some sort and against the backdrop of a flat and scorched Texas landscape, stood the President, Secretary of State Condoleezaa Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney and two others whom I do not recall.   There was Rice, all buttoned up in a navy blue jacket, navy blue skirt and navy blue pumps.  Cheney of course, was equally formal in suit and tie as were the other two gentlemen in the photo.  Front and center, there was our President, the one who insisted every one of his worn out staffers wear a jacket and tie on a weekend, standing among suits in blue jeans, cowboy boots and a wrinkled shirt.   Had you not known he was the President, you would assume he was the guy hired to drive the group up the road.

I don’t need another excuse to criticize the former President, and I’m looking forward to the hopeful administration of Barack Obama.  But that photo got under my skin.   Farewell George Bush,  the President, and the hypocritical demands of others.