In the end, it wasn’t close: In one of the most momentous election nights in American history, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois cruised to victory, becoming America’s 44th president and commander-in-chief.
We congratulate the senator, and offer our best wishes for a fruitful presidency.
And a tip of the hat to America, too: Just two generations ago, an African-American who attempted to cast a ballot courted violent death in the dark of night – but now a black man will ascend to the highest office in the land.
This is a tribute to how far the nation has progressed since the days of Bull Connor’s fire-hoses and George Wallace’s ugly rhetoric.
But it’s even more a tribute to Barack Obama, who began this campaign as a longshot even for the Democratic nomination.
It was to have been, recall, Hillary Clinton’s year.
Yet Obama not only electrified the majority of voters, he also motivated previously apathetic and uninvolved Americans to turn out and cast a ballot.
For him.
A word about John McCain:
We supported his candidacy, because we believed him to be better qualified to lead the nation through the tough times ahead.
But the economic meltdown almost certainly ended any hopes he had. Now the people have spoken – and he will return to the Senate.
Yet McCain can hold his head high – having dedicated his life to the service of America.
The hard fact is that this just was not his year. America was looking not to the past, or to McCain’s sterling record, but to the future – and Obama’s . . . what?
Barack Obama in many respects remains a cipher.
He enters office without much practical experience – but with an undeniable ability to inspire.
And he comes forearmed with a bolstered Democratic majority in both houses of Congress – a body now well situated to carry out his agenda.
If it so chooses.
The question is: What will that agenda turn out to be?
Or, perhaps more to the point: Can he break free of the special interests that helped propel him to the White House, and that call the tune to which official Washington all too often dances?
What Obama does in his first months will decide whether his is to be a landmark presidency – or just another wasted opportunity.
He can deliver himself, as many of his supporters doubtless expect he will, to the traditional insider base of the Democratic Party – especially big labor and the trial lawyers – and push a program of economic class warfare.
Or he can truly pursue the “new politics for a new time” that he promised so often during the campaign. He can break free of the ideological shackles that have constrained other Democrats.
Make no mistake: The first course threatens to bring to America a European-style socialist economy.
If Obama follows the lead of those who, in the name of “equity,” seek to impose tax after tax on businesses and higher-income wage-earners, he will squeeze the life out of the economy and stifle any chance of recovery and growth.
Indeed, he will doom America to an economy like those in Western Europe – where jobless rates are often more than double those of the US, and where per-capita real incomes are often 20 percent to 30 percent lower.
And if he brings to fruition his campaign flirtation with protectionist trade measures – similar to the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariff enacted in the wake of the 1929 Wall Street crash – he risks retaliation by America’s trading partners that might trigger a worldwide depression.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Obama can deploy his considerable political and oratorical skills to make a quick, clean break with Democratic orthodoxy.
He can govern as a true independent – not only reshaping America’s political landscape but producing a presidency as important and transforming as that of Ronald Reagan.
That means not only shaping an economic policy that ignores ideology in favor of common sense, but also overcoming the numerous contradictions in his own campaign pronouncements on foreign policy and national security – especially those involving such hot spots as Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yes, there would be anguished rhetoric from traditional Democratic special-interests if he does this; the hard-left blogosphere would explode, the unions certainly would cry “betrayal.”
But Barack Obama enters office with a true mandate for change – nonpartisan change.
And he has the intelligence and the persuasive power to put America on an independent course.
True, he may alienate his political base in the process. But, like Reagan, he may end up creating an entirely new political base – remember the Reagan Democrats? – that not only will bolster him but also redraw the nation’s political boundaries.
Barack Obama‘s election is a landmark moment in American history. He now has the opportunity to effect a truly transformational presidency.
This is his challenge.