44

I have come full circle. More than a year ago, at a small (they were smaller then) gathering in Brooklyn, New York, I shook the hand of the man who, last night, was lauded as this country’s 44th President of the United States.

I hope Ronald Regan will forgive me for appropriating his line for a Democratic presidential victory, but for me and millions like me, it finally feels like “morning in America.”

I am proud to be an American today. While I know it upsets some people to hear this, I haven’t been proud of my country for a long while now. But I still love it. I always have. You can still love something you’re not proud of.

Throughout this protracted campaign, Obama inspired Americans to believe in themselves and their corporate greatness again. It was something I feared we might have lost forever. The President-elect is the embodiment of this country’s palpable yearning for thoughtful, conscientious leadership. But more than that, Obama inspires all who look up to him to be equally buoyant, confident and magnanimous. He has bent “the arc of history…toward the hope of a better day.”

It turns out the American Dream isn’t dead after all.

* * *

Yesterday was one of America’s preeminent defining moments. What we witnessed was, in the words of one pundit, nothing less than, politically speaking, man stepping foot on the moon.

Next January, an African American will move into a mansion built primarily with the calloused hands of black slaves, just blocks from where cages constructed to hold human beings once stood. He will share the residence with the ghosts of the presidents past — Lincoln, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation and Teddy Roosevelt who, in 1901, was the first to entertain an African American dinner guest in the White House. He will be the Commander and Chief of an armed forces that was integrated only 60 years ago. It has been only 54 years since Brown vs. the Board of Education integrated the nation’s schools and only 45 years since Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stood on Washington’s National Mall and pricked the conscience of an entire nation. Regardless of your political ideology, Obama’s accomplishment should be a source of deep and abiding pride for all Americans. Obama’s victory was the zenith of two centuries of suffering and struggle.

America’s tragic history of slavery and racism is dreadful and far from resolved, but Obama is progress wrapped in flesh and blood. He is not the change, but rather the thing that appears validating the change that has already taken place. We do not yet live in a post-racial America. However, this monumental election mercifully calls into question all the old ways in which America used to think about race. Americans, no matter their geography or skin color, can now begin to see themselves differently. And what they do with that fruit of knowledge will alter this country in ways we cannot yet fathom. We should, all of us, applaud the fact that we were alive to witness such a historic moment. We should congratulate ourselves for throwing our backs behind martyrs such as Dr. King and all those who gave their lives for civil rights — the true inheritors of his victory. Some helped make it happen, but all will benefit from it.

America is every bit as much an idea as it is an identity. Yesterday, despite all our national baggage, this country succeeded, in the words of Dr. King, to judge Barack Obama by the content of his character and not the color of his skin. We pushed back against the complicit and implicit sins of our past and showed the world and ourselves that we are better than the shadowy patches of our history. If Americans corporately were victorious yesterday, African Americans specifically can embrace the triumph — their gain is the greatest of all. At last, they became full-blooded children of the American experiment in a way never before possible. Is anything impossible in America?

And if Obama, who shares a bi-racial parentage, embodies anything, it is the power and promise of what happens when black and white come together with a common vision and destiny. Even if he had lost, Obama has already made this a better country. Last night, standing on that stage in Chicago, Barack Obama found himself on the threshold of Dr. King’s oft invoked but never seen Promised Land.

* * *

For this movie guy, the past few weeks of the campaign reminded me of the end of the original Matrix, after Neo has come to understand fully the height of his powers. The malevolent agents attack him, punching furiously, but Neo is utterly unfazed. He is so much faster than those attacking him that he seems to move in slow motion, parrying their every strike. Likewise, McCain, in the final days, attacked furiously, from all different directions, but Obama was essentially nonplused, deflecting his rival’s aggression with something akin to ease and indifference.

Barack Obama ran perhaps the most technically flawless campaign in American history. His formidable supporters were as modern as his campaign’s 21st century mindset. Obama found victory in a multiracial coalition powered by the new face of America — disproportionately young ethnicities, “red and yellow, black and white,” hailing from cities and suburbs, who came out in impossibly large droves, bucking apathy, and linking arms across all incomes, ideologies and party loyalties. He swept into Republican enclaves of the Northeast Corridor, winning all regions of the country except the Deep South. He made deep inroads into New South states, invaded the country’s industrial and agricultural heartland, and spun the Rocky Mountain West on its head.

I watched the evening progress with a bounty of friends packed into my modestly-sized apartment. By the time it was over, most of us (we weren’t all hoping for a Democratic win) were beside ourselves with euphoria. When the results were called, we leapt jubilantly to our feet, screaming at the top of our lungs. We danced. We wept. We popped champagne. We raced through the hallways embracing everyone with whom we came in contact. Outside, a chorus of adulation joined ours. Horns honked for hours. Fireworks began to erupt. On the TV, hundreds of young people gathered outside the White House, just a mile or so from where we sat, chanting Obama’s name.

Two friends with me last night were residents of Great Britain, employees of the British Embassy. They may not have had a vote in yesterday’s election, but they still had a massive stake in the outcome, to say nothing of a fierce emotional investment. When the dust was settled, they too burst into boisterous, rowdy applause. Facebook comments this morning completed the story: “I am proud to be an American,” said an Australian, just one example among many similarly themed proclamations from my friends overseas. For a moment, it seemed like America immediately following the horrors of 9/11. Obama’s victory continues to resonate around the world today, stirring emotions and hope from Europe to Africa and back again. (For an excellent — and excellently written — observation about the election from Germany’s Spiegel, click here).

In the coming months and years, we will see if Obama truly has what it takes to change the world. As President, he must invigorate a troubled nation despised in much of the world, wrestle with two wars, and energize a disintegrating economy. I truly believe he has what it takes to transform this nation, despite the mountain of windmills against which he is now aligned. But today is not a day to concern ourselves with the almost limitless difficulties, the pregnant promises and the almost certain exaggerated expectations. All these things will still be there tomorrow. Today is a day of savoring.

I confess I am one of those weird souls that will very much miss this race and the entire political season in general. A rabid politico, I eat, breathe and sleep this stuff. Now what will I do? Now how will I spend my free time? Now what will I write about?

The truth is, Barack Obama shames me. I am, by nature, a thrower of rocks. While I try to lob only erudite and high-minded stones, I confess that I sometimes dredge them up from amongst the bottom-feeders. And so it was, with tears of joy streaming down my face, that I listened to President-elect Obama’s exalted-harmonious-conciliatory-respectful-inclusive-zealous victory speech and conceded that the ideals he inspires are woefully lacking in me.

I have spent far too much time on this blog attacking others instead of lifting them up. I have spent far too much time defending that which didn’t require my defense. I have spent far too much time reproaching the dark rather than extolling the light. Obama’s message is one of harmony and concord, of unity and fidelity; but I have often imperiled the message because of the messenger’s lack of austerity. I like being a literary pit-pull (perhaps too much, in fact), but a change, at least for a while, may be in order.

As everything in national politics shifts into a much more luxuriously pace, I think I too will take a break from blogging. While I adore doing it, a holiday always seems to allow one to come back refreshed, reenergized and, in my case, a little more introspective.

Thanks for perusing my tangled thoughts, even when they breathed fire instead of applying balm. I’ll be back. I promise. There will be plenty to talk about again very soon. Until then, thank you, and remember, Yes We Can!