“It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.” Barack Obama
Washington, DC, USA (Observer) At 11 pm on Tuesday, Barack Obama, a 47-year old African-American, the son of a Kenyan father and a mother from the US State of Kansas, was declared President-Elect of the United States of America. For a brief moment time appeared to stall around America. Grown men and women, white and black, seasoned commentators and politicians alike choked up speechless. Jesse Jackson, the veteran civil rights leader who himself twice attempted runs at the presidency, could not hold back the tears streaming down his cheeks. Thiswas a moment many have awaited for a long time. Congressman and Vietnam War hero John Lewis, who marched with Martin Luther King in Selma and Montgomery for the right of black Americans just to vote said he never thought he would see this day. He was not alone. Colin Powell, the former US Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted that he and all members of his family wept with joy.
Barack Obama’s victory, if uncertain during the day, was quickly sealed by 9:30 pm after he won Pennsylvania and then Ohio. Winning those two States made it all but impossible for his opponent John McCain to garner enough electoral college votes for a win, but the suspense was prolonged while polls were still open in the Obama-friendly Pacific Coast states of California, Oregon (voting by mail), and Washington.
Barely 10 minutes after polls closed on the west coast and in Hawaii, John McCain, the 72-year old senator and Vietnam War hero joined his supporters at his campaign headquarters in Arizona to concede the election. He gave what many said was his best speech of the campaign. John McCain was always known for his independence and moderate ideas, and his concession remarks focused on reconciliation and America coming together to build a better future. Some in his audience, still recoiling from a bitter defeat, booed at times. He was visibly angered by them and succeeded in calming them and the nation down. McCain congratulated Obama for a brilliant campaign and called him his president, saying:
“I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.”
All evening tens of thousands of Barack supporters streamed into Grant Park in Chicago. Others clogged Times Square in New York and still thousands more were rallying at the gates of the White House in Washington. In the District of Columbia’s North East, South East and South West neighbourhoods, streets were flooded with young people who before tonight did not believe that one of their own, a family very much like theirs, might one day occupy the Big House up the road. They were too young for the civil rights movement, but they too had been waiting for this night. Finally, “The Man” was one of them.
At 11:20 pm, the revelling crowds in Grant Park, Times Square, DC and the people in millions of households around the country stopped what they were doing to listen to the victory speech of Barack Hussein Obama. Victory speeches are usually anti-climactic and not rousing or epic, but Obama, alone on a magnificently arranged stage, looking down at the more than 250,000 enthralled and inspired people who came to party with him. He began:
“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”
Barack Obama evoked memories of Martin Luther King and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR, by talking about the life of one Atlanta voter, 106-year old Ann Nixon Cooper, and what this African-American women who was born just a generation after slavery has witnessed.
“She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that ‘we shall overcome.’ Yes we can.” 250,000 people joined him: “Yes we can!”
“When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can!”
“And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can!”
The night was full of symbolism. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP, was founded 100 years ago this January in Springfield, Illinois, the town that launched Obama’s political career. Grant Park, where Barack Obama decided to hold his election victory party, was the scene of clashes between Chicago Police and demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic Party National Convention just after the assassinations of two other agents of change, Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. Sadly also, Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham, who raised him in Hawaii, passed away barely 24 hours before her son’s victory. Ms. Dunham had received her absentee ballot on 27 October and her vote for her grandson counted.
This year more than ever the US election was also a world election. The US is involved in two international wars. The world is looking for an American leadership to rekindle the recession-bound global economy, cooperate in pressing environmental problems and in general reverse what many consider 8 years of a disastrous Bush doctrine of arrogance and unilateralism. People around the world kept tabs on the daily polls, watched the debates at odd hours, and even learned to make sense of the unique US Electoral College system, and now people around the globe were also celebrating the change that has come to America. Barack Obama was clearly aware of this international excitement and interest in his election and took note of it in his victory speech:
“And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand……… the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.”
A few minutes after Obama’s speech, a friend called from London. He and many of his colleagues had been up all night. He said America made him proud. A US citizen in Italy said she may now be able to say with pride that she is an American. These sentiments were being repeated many times over. Having lived and travelled in many parts of Europe in the past decade, I know that America had a bad image, deserved in many ways, in Europe and elsewhere. Even US officials were at times hesitant to defend America’s foreign policy and worldview.
The people around the world must realize that this was an American election rather than a world election. However enlightened and refreshing Barack Obama may seem, however different from Bush he may be, the world cannot expect miracles from him. What the US and Obama have is a chance to start with goodwill and trust.
At the height of the Great Depression, America elected a wheelchair-bound President. FDR enacted the New Deal, dug America out of the worst economic crisis in its history, and led his country and its allies to victory in World War II. He told America that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. Tonight many Americans put away their fear of change. Barack Obama won in every polled category or segment of the American populace except for people over 65 years old. The American people have put their trust in a smart, charismatic African-American to guide America, and indeed the world, out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and through the unstable and uncertain environment of international terrorism.
By Dr. Ahmed H. Esa
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
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