A historic day in America

In the huge victory rally that Barack Obama held in Chicago’s Grant Park, the newly-elected 44th president of the United States conceded that he had been the least likely of candidates for the highest office in the land: he was a black man with a Muslim-sounding name running to lead a country racially polarized throughout its story and currently fighting a war against Muslim extremists.

And yet he might also have been the most historically appropriate candidate for our troubled times. It was about time we broke the color barrier in our search for the best and the brightest to lead our country. Barack Obama was certainly among the best and the brightest: his meteoric rise from a humble background with a single mother to the Harvard Law Review and the U.S. Senate to presidential candidate can attest to that. It was an unconventional, but classic, American success story.

It was also about time a figure who represented the different strains of the American mosaic ran for the highest office in the land: his father was black and from Africa, his mother was white and his grandparents raised him in Hawaii, his stepfather was from Indonesia and Obama went to school there. He has been called the first “Asian” candidate, as well as the first black candidate, and yet he has equal parts white blood.

Finally, it was about time the world saw that after eight years of saber-rattling aboard and a history of racism here at home, the American people stood up for their ideals, and showed how genuinely they respected and stood behind those ideals, by electing the man who truly inspired them regardless of the color of his skin, regardless of his ethnic background, regardless of the hidebound smears flung against him in a campaign that had degenerated into nothing more than false alarms and fear mongering about his affiliations and character.

America did itself proud, and renewed its image in the eyes of the world, by choosing a historic figure for its leader in one of the most historic and transitional periods in its short but celebrated history. God speed President Barack Obama and we all wish him well.

And God speed John McCain, the valiant warrior who served his country with incredible grit and courage both on the battlefield and in the legislative trenches in Washington, D.C. He has truly earned his wings as a genuine American war hero and a true political maverick in the best tradition. That he allowed himself to be manipulated into becoming just another politician running a scorched-earth campaign at a time when America needed straight answers to the historic challenges it faced was a true American tragedy. John McCain once rode the Straight Talk Express, but got off that bus for the ultimate campaign of his life.

Dimitri C. Michalakis

©2008 NEOCORP MEDIA

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