Obama In Office: Some thoughts

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Glen Reynolds has some "tonal hopes" for the Obama administration:

I agree with Barack Obama on some issues and disagree on others, but my hopes for the Obama presidency have mostly to do with tone. By reaching out to conservative columnists, and by going out of his way to say that he thinks George W. Bush is "a good man," Mr. Obama has made some efforts to transcend the nastiness that has emanated from much of the Democratic Party over the past eight years, where open hatred of Mr. Bush and Republicans has been a major source of social bonding. That is a wise move on his part, as it makes it less likely that Republicans will return the favor. Venomous hatred by the opposition seriously harmed the Clinton and Bush administrations, and Mr. Obama will have a much more successful presidency if he can avoid similar problems. Whether this approach succeeds or not, however, will depend on whether his followers go along; in this, it is an early test of President Obama's ability to lead.

Yep.

John Taylor, who also runs the Nixon Library, has an interesting take on Rick Warren's Inaugural prayer, which he thinks was needlessly exclusionary because it ended with the Lord's Prayer. In comments, I disagreed mildly:

I like the approach of the Boy Scouts. Everyone is encouraged to pray in accordance with his or her own faith's tradition and beliefs. So when a group of Boy Scouts is led in prayer, the one praying prays in his or her own way. If the voice of the prayer is a Jew, then it's a Jewish prayer. That probably wouldn't work in a national political forum, but I would like to see us move in that direction.

(HT: Hugh Hewitt.) What do you think?