I was only a few years old at the time, but I remember it as if it happened yesterday.

I was watching television with my dad in our living room when Ronald Reagan appeared on screen.

“Who is that?” I asked him. “He’s the next President of the United States,” my dad said.

There was a certain tone in my dad”s voice that day. It was a tone of optimism and excitement because we were beginning a new era for our country.

Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States Jan. 20 and that too will begin a new era for our country, just as it was when George Washington was inaugurated on April 30, 1789; and when Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861; and when James A. Garfield was inaugurated on March 4, 1893; and when John F. Kennedy was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 1961; and all of the other presidents before, after and in between.

In all of those years, there were negative events that had happened before that we wanted to move forward from and positive ones we wanted to build upon.

The same is certainly true this year. On the negative side, the economy is very weak, and we are still fighting an unpopular war. On the positive side, we seem to be making strides in the war on terrorism.

It doesn’t matter if you are a Republican or a Democrat or a Libertarian or a member of the Green Party, most of us can agree that the country needs to move on from George W. Bush. After eight years, it’s time for someone else to give it a try.

In college football, most coaches would get the boot long before eight years if strong results were not achieved. The same goes for most CEOs.

It indeed is a new era for this country and his name is Barack Obama.

Like him or not, he deserves this chance.

At an immigration awareness evening at St. Edward Catholic Church Wednesday, Mayor Tom Stiehm made an important point about the cultural changes in Austin.

“In the next five or six years, we”ll have 5,000 or 6,000 Hispanics, and they will all be legal, either citizens or on their way to being citizens,” he said. “And what are you going to look back on, a legacy of hate and fighting or a legacy of working together?”

The same holds true in politics.

We may not agree with the views of our new president, but we should do whatever we can to come together as one nation, on both sides of the political aisle, in an effort to make it stronger and move forward for the future.

It all begins Jan. 20.