Obama's transcendence is beyond race
Supporters of President Elect Barack Obama embrace at the Boneyard bar on Tuesday night in Denver, Colorado. A group of about 100 African Americans gathered at the popular bar to watch election results. Photo: AFP
The elevation of Barack Obama to the White House is a transcendent moment, for what this election says about a nation where blacks were once considered property.
And that might be the least of it.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime event. At odd intervals 1800, 1860, 1932, 1980 the nation reaches a "pivot point," an election that draws the line between the past and the future. And 2008 appears to be just such a line in the shifting sands of our convulsive times.
Reagan-style conservative supremacy? Over. The era of baby boomer leadership? Waning.
And maybe, just maybe, something new has arrived: a post-partisan approach to governing, founded on the Obama Coalition, fuelled by young and minority voters, powered by the 21st century technologies that helped turn a first-term senator from Illinois into a historic lodestone.
From the beginning, Obama had his sights on something bigger than the "50 percent plus one" approach championed by Karl Rove. He wanted a larger statement.
"Even if other candidates are able to eke out a victory, I think they are less likely to pull in independents and Republicans and new people who are currently not voting," Obama told The Associated Press 15 months ago.
"I think what people are looking for right now is somebody who can bring the country together and maybe shape the kind of majority that will actually deliver on health care, that will actually deliver on a bold energy strategy, that can actually do something about serious education reform."
On Tuesday, he received the huge wave of support he sought. But will he be able to do all that he promised? Will his ecstatic supporters be satisfied with anything less?
And did Obama really receive a mandate, or was he the beneficiary of the nation's disgust with President Bush, and its unease with America's course?
These are the questions that will be answered over the next four years. But for the moment, some astounding things are certain:
Our next president will be a man who identifies himself as black, but was raised by his white mother a man who reflects the multiracial society America has become.
He was born in the 1960s, and was too young to experience the Vietnam era that left scars on the nation's psyche for decades. And his lack of experience, central to his opponents' campaigns against him in the primaries and general election, means that he is not necessarily invested in the way things have always been done.
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