Sitting here watching the returns from south of the border. None of the networks seem to want to call it, but Ohio has gone for Obama, Florida is definitely trending in that direction and California is a mortal lock to go Democrat. I’ll say it: the United States has elected Barack Obama as its next President.
So congratulations, America, on picking the right guy for the job.
Here’s hoping all of your people can respect the choice. Here’s hoping that your political discourse will move forward from this day in a spirit of tolerance and respect. Here’s hoping that ideas and principles return to their rightful place of predominance in the media coverage of your political discussions.
It’s been eight years since you chose the wrong guy; an anti-intellectual frat boy who revelled in his ordinariness, and whose lack of credentials for the job were obvious to everyone. Eight years of watching you – a nation once renowned as the Great Crucible of the democratic experiment – ignore your own dearest and best principles. Eight years during which the respect of the world for your country waned as a result of Mr. Bush’s outrageous and immoral adventures, all of which it pained us to see taking place at the expense of the great majority of your own people.
You have taken the right first step to recover from the damage you, as a people, have done to yourselves. To quote David Foster Wallace, I wish you way more than luck.
p.s: Step 2 involves getting rid of this Sarah Palin person.
Update: 11:00 p.m. EST. It’s official, and something like a million people in Grant Park in Chicago are chanting “Yes We Can.” I have chills running up and down my spine. Congratulations and all the best.
I’m still trying to puzzle together how Palin was an energizing choice for McCain — I hear him speak on NPR (National Public Radio) every morning, and he sounds like a testy old coot. How he came up with Palin, who simply embodies everything that Dubya was wrapped up in an estrogen suit, is still beyond me.
Agreed.