America woke up with a party hangover last Wednesday that it still doesn’t want to shake. The night before, we did something that many people thought impossible as late as that afternoon: We chose a honest to goodness African-American man to occupy the White House.

Now, every corner of the world has adopted a new view of the United States — one that’s largely favorable and impressed with our ability to defy stereotype — and it’s not unfair to say the consensus holds that people want to skip right over Thanksgiving and Christmas on the calendar and go straight to Jan. 20.

Within every consensus however lurk skeptics, and regarding President-elect Barack Obama the video game crowd might be among them. Though Obama made news last month by having campaign ads plugged into video games, he also has suggested that gaming implies laziness and underachievement, as Game Guy has pointed out and the New York Times reiterates today.

We here at Game Guy HQ prefers to give the next president some benefit of doubt, given that he, like many other critics of gaming, may not understand the potential for gaming to do more than just entertain. Games can be learning tools for all ages depending on the context of their use, and may lay the foundation for new ways of learning we have yet to grasp.

We presume that a man who has won over so many people with his compassion and insight on many issues has done so by being equal parts learned and rational — and by not being too pre-judgmental. Obama already understands the importance of technology in all our lives; he’ll likely find the value of gaming related to that, too.