Last Tuesday was a rather amazing experience for us, wasn't it?

While the state of mind of McCain supporters probably defied description, certainly those who backed Barack Obama seemed to verge on delirium.

Some of it was about making history, of course. We Americans are cream puffs about those moments when we get to experience our own greatness.

Like a lot of other people, I will confess to being quite delighted over Mr. Obama's victory, on a number of different levels — not least of which was the shattering of a barrier that I did not believe I would live long enough to see.

If you have any doubts about how moving that alone is for millions of African Americans in this country, no matter who they are, search the Web for videos of the emotional reactions of both Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice after Obama's victory.

As euphoric as it all is, though, eventually we're all going to come back down to earth. Eventually, sometime after January 20, 2009, Barack Obama is going to start actually running the country.

I am still a journalist and, whatever might be my personal opinions and perspectives, I still have a job to do. Which means, in short, that Mr. Obama and his Administration will not be immune from my capacity for complaining.

And, to tell you the truth, I am not even prepared to assume that I will have nothing to complain about.

I was watching some relatively elderly footage of Michelle Obama last weekend, talking about why her husband had decided to run for President. She said, among other things, that he wanted to bring "a new sense of hope to people who've been ignored for a long time."

The list of people who've been ignored for a long time is probably fairly lengthy, even if one only considers the past eight years to be a long time. But, as I'm sure you've guessed by now, that list would have to include microbusinesses in order to be at all accurate.

So, if Michelle got it right, that should give the nation's 25 million microbusinesses something of a claim on the new President's attention.

But, will it?

Only time will tell.