Cynics are made, not born, and life for some of us supports a deeply cynical outlook. We believe that selfishness and hypocrisy reign, so often cynicism seems like realism.

Cynics can point to a thousand and one instances where they were right - where someone who seemed to act out of heartfelt goodness in fact made a fortune doing it, where preachers, teachers, and politicians say one thing and do another with depressing regularity.

Once a cynic, always a cynic.

Or so I thought. My transformation began a year ago, when I publicly predicted Barack Obama would become president.

A diehard cynic wouldn't have done that. Other candidates would have seemed more likely, since they didn't use Obama's soaring rhetoric and high ideals to make political points. He took the long view, offered the larger vision, and examined our values and applied them to the world as we know it. Could he win? I wondered.

Given our party-divided, oil-guzzling, coal-burning, greedy, spoiled, hypocritical mess of a country, could such a bright, idealistic, downright nice man get elected? No, said cynics. But my faith in cynicism was growing shaky, so I said yes, he could.

And he did, shaking it even more.

The fact that he was the first African-American president put the last nail in cynicism's coffin.

I do admit that my old cynic received some support from one part of Obama's inaugural address. He intoned, "We are a patchwork heritage of Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus and nonbelievers."

Nonbelievers? Come on, actually admitting a lack of religiosity amounts to a political and social kiss of death. Even though the Constitution specifically prohibits a religious test as a qualification for holding office (see Article VI, Section 3), American voters in fact can't abide open skepticism toward faith. Hence all smart politicians put on religious shows. I guess I should appreciate his even mentioning nonbelievers.

Yet Obama's address supported values that religious and nonreligious citizens alike hold dear: compassion, inclusiveness, the open hand in place of the clenched fist, setting aside childish things, humility, restraint. All figured prominently in his address, and all bespeak a man in touch with universal values.

Obama did mention cynics: "What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long, no longer apply." Time was, when the ground shifted for us northern cynics, it was because we slipped on the ice.

Obama insisted that citizens begin to take responsibility for doing their individual parts, that government can't do everything, that it's not big or small government that matters, but whether government actually works. Programs that don't work will get cut.

Duty, responsibility, and cutting programs that don't work? Who can argue with that? Not cynics. Not even conservatives.

Now I want to see if Obama's deeds match his words. He will have to ask Americans to sacrifice for the good of their country. He will have to cut programs ranging from subsidies to entitlements to useless but popular buy-outs. It's going to hurt, and people will howl. But not the former cynics.

We're going to celebrate having a leader who actually follows through, who says what he means and means what he says. A few conservatives might celebrate too, and that itself will give cynics more reason to question their belief in selfishness and hypocrisy.

Obama asserted "We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do."

All right, former cynics, let's believe him. And let's give him some time at least to start in those directions, showing measurable progress.

If nothing happens, we can always lapse back into cynicism with a sigh and a sad shrug. Even worse, we'll have to bear Rush Limbaugh's crowing that his Inauguration Day wish for Obama's failure came true. Yes, Limbaugh did say "I hope he fails" on Tuesday.

For more reasons than I care to ponder, that would be downright tragic.