In some ways, it seems as if everything changed on January 21st, didn't it?

We had a new President who was about to bring a whole new style to Washington, couched in different language, moved by different priorities, heading in a different direction. And all that different-ness was made all the more stark by virtue of the fact that President Bush served a full two terms in office.

Under the right circumstances, eight years can be a very, very long time.

On the other hand, in some other ways, it seems as if nothing has changed at all, doesn't it?

It's not just that microbusiness owners are dealing with pretty much the same set of problems in March that they were dealing with in January. I hope we're not that unreasonable.

But we're also dealing with many of the same problems that we were dealing with in January 2004. And the set of folks who are supposed to be bringing all that different-ness from the White House to the Small Business Administration aren't even in place yet.

Last week, Democratic and Republican staffers from the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship told attendees at the National Women's Business Council 2009 Summit that Karen Mills was expected to be confirmed as SBA Administrator later this month.

Taking the long view, two months isn't terrible as far as getting an SBA Administrator into place. It took President Bush twice as long to bestow Hector Barreto upon us.

Under the current circumstances, though, these two months have seemed like an eternity.

There is an awful lot of work to be done at the SBA and none of it will get started in earnest until Mills is confirmed. At the same time, none of the rest of us can assess her plans for the agency until she is in place and can provide us with said plans.

There's also the minor matter of a collapsing economy.

All the talk about small businesses leading the way out of the recession starts to sound like empty rhetoric when the powers that be can't even get a head honcho into the driver's seat at the federal small business agency.

So, here we all are, in limbo. There are plenty of small business advocates waiting for Ms. Mills and the opportunity to roll up their sleeves and get to work.

The distance between one minute and the next seems a lot longer when you have nothing to do but watch the seconds tick away.