The night unfolded pretty much as the pundits expected. Millions plopped down in front of their televisions and in front of computer screens as data flooded in the polls as precincts from sea to shining sea wound up their election day. Some networks began calling states and granting electoral votes to the candidates before even a single precinct reported; other media outlets took a more cautious view, remembering the debacles which hit Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. The outlook, though, turned into inevitability quickly. Long before John McCain took the stage for his nobly-executed concession speech in Phoenix, the result was clear - Barack Obama had been elected by a wide majority of states to become the forty-fourth president of the United States.
The precedent in presidential politics, as they say, was history...
There is much of historical impact which surrounds the election of Obama to the highest executive office in the land. The most obvious factor - that he is the first African-American to earn the honor of governing from the Oval Office - is a tribute to the work of so many who came before. For many, November 4, 2008 will be remembered as another landmark in the long struggle toward racial reconciliation in the nation. It is a climax in the integration of American politics. For those who would battle for an equal place at the table, the slave and the soldier and the civil-rights marcher, citizens all, this election serves as a flowering of the long-dormant plant of justice, finally bearing fruit once again.
But to say that race was the sole determinant in this election would be to miss a greater story in this race. Despite McCain's choice as his running mate of Alaska governor Sarah Palin, Obama took 54 percent of the female vote nationwide. He captured two-thirds of the youth vote; two-thirds of the Hispanic vote; a resounding majority of the minorities of the land. The heart of the political world, Washington DC, sang for Obama to a resounding 93 percent tune. This victory resonates deeper than race. The multitudes which cast ballots across the country helped usher in a new era for America. Many people decry that the elected leaders merely pass debts down to future generations. Now, though, the baby-boomer generation passes the torch to its children on the voices of the generation thereafter. For those future generations, their time is now.
This election serves as a mandate for a new national course. The youth, brought out in numbers not seen in decades through the rapid grassroots mobilization of the internet, made their voices heard. So, too,
Obama inherits a landscape that comes fraught with potential mines which could easily detonate a potentially-promising presidency. An erosion of confidence in the chief executive has been coupled with the crippling realities of a national economy held aloft by chief executives with gilded parachutes huddled in skyscraper offices as the floodwaters pour in below. Wars rage on two fronts, one seen and one largely ignored, both blanketing an adversary which may or may not have nuclear weaponry. Roads and bridges crumble, the cost of repairs auctioned off in exchange for perpetual tollways. People feel in large numbers that their situation is worse off now than it was a decade ago, a generation ago. And while the present always seems to be doomed to looking less rosy than past or present, regardless of the generation, one would be hard-pressed to argue that there are not severe obstacles to be surmounted in order to get out of the quagmire.
Initial reports from both around the country and around the world sound promising. As the parties raged along Pennsylvania Avenue, I made contact with a friend standing two feet from the White House fence as the mob of citizens poured into the streets. The mood was electric, apparently, a sea of jubilation. Flags were flying from cars; cops standing amongst the throngs had no idea what to do. The capital was overtaken by the celebration.
A BBC call-in show the morning after the vote was flooded with sentiments of hope and expectation from a range of callers, some as near to the action as San Antonio, others in far-flung outposts dependent on future American actions such as Kabul. Callers from around the world seemed relieved to see a face with which they could identify, seeing in it the message that America was willing to start looking deeper than the upper-crust white male society for its leader. Obama, regardless of his own background, portrays an image of America that is more in tune with the times. Perhaps Cornell West (and the high-school teacher who made me read the book) was right - Race Matters. In electing a minority to power the United States, the world is given an image that America, for all its ills, is willing to keep striving for the innovative path.
I confront my notebook, filled with ramblings through the election season. Back in February, as the primary season raged on, I traveled to the capital with my wife to visit her great-grandmother. Along the way I was able to visit several friends who work at the U.S. Capitol, and got many a chance to wander around all the monuments. At the FDR Memorial I was struck by a quote which inspired these lines, penned in a Boeing 737 as we returned to the west coast:
"FDR once said, 'This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.' Our moment of reckoning for the 21st century may well already be upon us. This election will either set in action the decline and fall of the hegemon (something we are already witnessing in its nascent stages), or it sets into action a new, more sustainable course of governance... the choice is one dependent on every citizen, and any wrong move will set the MouseTrap a-tumblin'..." (written February 11, 2008, somewhere 35,000 feet over the frost-covered plains)
That is the greatest achievement of November 4, 2008. The nation which has been at the forefront of progress for so long finally caught up with the rest of the world.The jury is still out as to whether substantive change can be rendered by Obama as he takes over a battered executive branch. But no matter what the result of the next four years of governance, the simple fact that it is Barack Obama who takes over at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is a testament to how far the United States has finally come as a nation.