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.