Just an obvious corrective with facts and figures, to all the excitement.
His story could be that of any president of Scots/Irish descent, rising through law school to emerge as the smoothly intellectual liberal derided by the Clintons during the campaign. Constant references to his colour obscure his real strengths and possible weaknesses.
The world wept with joy on Tuesday night. Probably more such tears were shed than in all history. The reason was not that a Democrat had beaten a Republican, or that the new man is young and has a gift for turning banality into rhetoric. The emotion was because Barack Obama is black.
A similar point is made more grandly by a Harvard professor in the NY Times. Obama’s election was at last the fulfillment of the founding fathers’ vision:
“This was a vision that terrified as much as it fascinated the conservative men who were often amazed at what they had signed on to in 1787: a revolutionary charter of power granted by liberty,” in James Madison’s nervously triumphalist prose. So they promptly ensured that it would only very slowly threaten the political hegemony of older white men.”
Former BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC Radio 4; Editor Political and Parliamentary Programmes, BBC Westminster; former London Editor Belfast Telegraph. Hon Senior Research Fellow, The Constitution Unit, Univ Coll. London
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