It’s hard to imagine a more inspiring back-to-back of political addresses than McCain’s concession and Obama’s victory speech.
Is this a great country or what?
I’ve gotten a lot of e-mails from friends tonight bemoaning how the end of the world is upon us and Obama will take the nation over the proverbial cliff. I do not agree.
Love Obama or hate him-this is a great day for America. John McCain said so in his concession speech and for the short run at least-I would submit that he is right. It was kind of a sad in a way-his concession speech sounded like the McCain I loved in 2000, the guy who actually represented a great future for the Republican party and not the guy who he morphed into this year. In defeat, John McCain found the John McCain that most of us remember. McCain’s campaign has been pretty indefensible through much of the general election, with its ridiculous attempts to pander to the nuts costing him a lot of votes in the middle he would have otherwise gotten. Whether people realize it or not, this election is as much a repudiation of George Bush and what he has done to this country, and if this is what it takes to make people recognize that his kind of governance and politics was neither required or desired-well, I’m Ok with that.
Rather than bemoan this development, why not celebrate what it really represents? I stood in line for an hour today to vote in person for the first time in 30 years. When I went to work this morning the cars were lined up around the block from the school where I voted. Anecdotally, more people participated in this election than in any one in our recent memory. That’s a good thing. The exact percentage of voters who cast ballots won’t be determined until final tabulations of all votes are completed. That will be days or weeks away, but nearly every indicator signaled that a historically high percentage of Americans participated. Its about time.
Was Obama lucky? Sure. But as Ross Douthat wrote: “great politicians are almost always lucky politicians, and Obama’s good fortune does not diminish the magnitude of his triumph tonight, and the credit that he and his campaign deserve for the race they’ve run.
And then, of course, there’s the fact that Obama has just been elected President of a nation in which he could have been bought and sold as a slave just seven generations ago. I don’t think there are any words adequate to the occasion of America electing its first black President, so I’ll just say this: This may be a bleak day for the Republican Party, but come what may in the years ahead, it’s a great day for our country. Barack Obama deserves congratulations, tonight, but so does the nation he’s about to govern: We’ve come a long, long way.”
I truly believe that. And I’ll echo the words of John McCain: Barack Obama is my President.
Part of me wants to say, “nanny-nanny-boo-boo.” However, the President Elect was much more articulate and accurate to say this is our country. It is not a country of red or blue or what have you.
It was telling to me to listen to the crowds at Senator McCain’s speech boo when he mentioned President Elect Obama and the cheers Senator McCain received from the Obama crowd. Perhaps that is a sign of the difference between the parties.
Another sign of the difference between the parties is the demographics of the groups who were present to support their candidate at the end. I saw a homogenous group at the Biltmore. In Grant Park we saw all ages, colors, shapes and sizes. From one of the wealthiest people in the nation (Harpo herself) to children and others. Perhaps that is what is different.
The real America has more in common than in dispute. We agree that alternative energies need to be explored. We agree that our military is horribly overextended. We agree that our men and women in uniform need the best equipment and support we can give them. We agree the goal of America is “a more perfect Union” and that government “of the people, by the people and for the people” has not perished. We agree that we all love our country and want it to regain its rightful leadership position in the world.
The devil is in the details.
I did not support Senator McCain for many of the reasons articulated by Skippy and echoed by others here and elsewhere. I will not participate in a party which discounts my patriotism because we disagree. I will not participate in a party which vilifies service members for political gain. I will not participate in a party which accuses men and women of conscience of making choices for less than honorable reasons simply because of a disagreement over those choices.
Hope can be alive in America. What we want for our Country is possible. We can hope that the President Elect can lead as well as many of us believe he can.
It is a great day to be an American.
Best
OAM
To me, that race thing is a crock. President-elect Obama does not have a father who suffered while marching for civil rights, he did not sweat his way through night school to become the first person in his family to graduate college.
The day that a person from a small town in Mississippi who graduated from a small state college and can trace his lineage back to a sharecropper and a slave will be the day that is a great day for erasing America’s great dark stain of race relations, not today.
It’s the difference of looking over the cliff with a safety rail or nothing between you and the bottom. We all have done this. Remember that feeling in your gut?
I am proud to be a conservative and to have cast my vote for Mccain/Palin.
As usual, well said Skippy! The beauty of our system is that we make change on a regular basis and the country continues to be strong and vibrant. Good on the old girl!
I can’t say enough about the speeches. I thought McCain’s was very classy and good way to end a tough fight. Obama’s speech actually touched me. I’m an apathetic self-centered ignorant American, and for the first time in my life, I got goosebumps from a speech. I know it sounds pretty gay, but it really touched me and instead of deciding if I’ll be living in PI or Thailand, I’m actually excited for the future of our great country, and looking to forward to what’s ahead.