Oh, the things we’ve learned over the past eight years.

We’ve learned that we really didn’t have a good reason to start a war in Iraq.

We’ve learned that the people running our financial system believed money really did grow on trees.

And we’ve learned that the man who was elected in 2000 to run America doesn’t regret his actions regarding any of the series of disasters that have taken place since he took office.

But today is not a discussion of the past eight years. Today marks the beginning of a new chapter in the tale of America. And while we certainly have many lessons to learn and live by, any political commentator will tell what we should focus on is the first 100 days of Barack Obama’s administration that we are welcoming to the presidency today.

One of the things we’ve learned over the past few years is Washington, D.C. must have a different definition of bipartisan than the one in Webster’s, which defines the term as “marked by or involving cooperation, agreement and compromise between two major political parties.”

We’ve lived through eight years of uncompromising unilateralism in the nation’s capital, and the new president has promised to take steps towards true bipartisan politics in Washington. But Andrew Taylor, department head of political science, said Obama seems to be living up to his word, particularly as two members of his cabinet are Republicans.

And true bipartisanship is important — one of the first orders of business will be the new economic stimulus package. As students, this may affect the jobs we can get now, the jobs we can get after graduating, the price of anything a college student would buy and any number of government programs that make life affordable, like federal student loan program and the GI Bill.

So yes, we have a dog in this fight.

But students have also committed large amounts of time to campaign and vote for the “change” candidate, and they have earned the right to know what sort of change they’ve managed to put into the Oval Office.

Everyone had his or her pet issue during the campaign: the environment, the war on terror, health care, Social Security and reform and possible re-regulation of the financial system were some of the issues on the table.

But most of all, what a lot of students (and other Americans, for that matter) wanted was a breath of fresh air in the nation’s capital. And did we get it?

Yes and no.

Yes, today marks the day where a black American finally takes the oath of office and becomes president. And yes, with the economy in the crapper, it looks like Washington is actually going to do something big that should help most people.

But we haven’t seen the end of politics as usual and a sweeping new interest group ushered in by Al Gore’s Internet. Taylor said elections will be conducted in a similar fashion, with the only changes in strategy reflecting the potential new battlegrounds in previously untouchable GOP states.

Taylor also noted how difficult it would be for Obama to turn the netroots activists from a base to campaign from to a base to govern with. It’s limited to any of the dozen or so e-mails people might receive from the Obama administration with information about the coming months.

Barring new developments in foreign affairs, what we should look forward to is a healthy debate and the beginnings of new coalitions on domestic issues like the economy, health care and the environment, Taylor said.

But again, the first 100 days are key. This may have been a historic election, but the more important thing to worry about is the creation (or failure) of historic legislation in these economic doldrums.

Thoughts on the inauguration? Tell Paul what you are looking forward to in Washington at [email protected].