Last fall, after Obama got elected, Richard the Intellectual got so discouraged about politics he took to reading religious poetry – The Divine Comedy about cured him of that but, then, he switched to the Civil War and when he got to the Battle of Antietam the gloom thickened.

The way Richard tells it the day after the battle the two armies were so stunned they sat on the limestone ridges above Antietam Creek staring at each other across the bodies they’d killed and maimed the day before without firing a single shot.

Of course, Antietam also brought Richard face to face with the Emancipation Proclamation – which, it turns out, is a peculiar document. The Emancipation freed the slaves – right? Well, yes, and no. Lincoln didn’t free a single slave in a border state – like Kentucky or Maryland. Or in any area in the South – like New Orleans – which was under Union control. Instead, the Emancipation only freed slaves in states that had seceded – like South Carolina – and only in places the Union army hadn’t occupied. In other words – the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in places where Lincoln had no control. So, in effect, it freed no one at all.

On the other hand it turned out to be a death knell to slavery by setting a course that zigged and zagged plenty but eventually reached its culmination.

The point is politics doesn’t run in straight lines. It runs in crooked, twisted lines. And there are plenty of unintended consequences. A year before Antietam when Lincoln was inaugurated, right after he took his hand off the Bible, he offered the South a deal: If the seceded states would return to the Union he’d guarantee them their right to own slaves by writing it into the Constitution. All they had to do in return was agree there would be no new slave states after 1861. He changed directions in the fall of 1862 but the Emancipation was still largely a symbolic gesture but, then, in the fullness time took on a life of its own.

Politics still works in zigs and zags. Elizabeth Dole runs an ad to save herself – and blows herself out of office. Bush sets out to win the war on terrorism (a first-rate idea), fumbles, ends up in Iraq five years and in the political blink of an eye the Democrats find themselves with huge majorities in both houses of Congress and in control of the White House for the first time in a generation.

Now the reins are in Obama’s hands and he’s going to have his hands full, I suspect, because his fellow Democrats in Congress are nothing if not activists. They’ve got ideas – and agendas – of their own and there’s going to be doing plenty of zigs – and the zags are going to end up right on Obama’s doorstep.

Just look at their grumbling over Obama asking Rick Warren – who doesn’t toe the party line on gay marriage – to say a prayer at the Inauguration. Obama’s response: He invited the gay bishop who leads the Episcopal Church to say a prayer of his own in front of the Lincoln Memorial. That certainly sounds ecumenical. But it also sure looks like Obama’s trying to have his cake and eat it too – all wrapped up in a neat bow of inclusiveness. There’s nothing wrong with the idea of being nice and polite to folks we’re fighting tooth and toenail – but the fact is Rev. Warren and the Episcopal bishop can’t both be right. Obama’s trying to carve out the middle ground but, in the end, all he may end up doing is making both the left and right mad.

Beyond that, take a moment to imagine all the unintended consequences of bank bailouts, automakers bailouts, the worsening war in Afghanistan and pulling out of Iraq – then try to imagine (given its evangelical fervor to remold America) all the ideas that may fly out of a Democratic Congress.

Obama’s got his hands full – this may be the shortest presidential honeymoon in history.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.