Thoughts on the Election

I was at a bar on Tuesday night when the news poured in that Barack Obama had won Virginia, pushing him over the threshold of 270 electoral votes to become President Elect of the United States of America. The election of Barack Obama will definitely fight it out for moments that defined this generation. I'm glad he got elected, obviously. I don't think I could have stomached a McCain-Palin administration (then a Palin-Lieberman administration) for the next four or eight years. No thank you. It has taken me a few days to gather my thoughts. It still hasn't sunken in yet that the country in which I live elected this guy who nobody thought had a chance when he announced his candidacy in 2007. It excites me. It renews my faith in the American political process that all of the "scandals" (Williams Ayers, Reverend Wright, ACORN) proved to be non-starters. Whether Barack Obama is the best president we ever had, the worst president we ever had, or completely forgettable, America finally stopped being influenced by fear and bullying. It will be interesting to see an America led by an open intellectual again. Not to say that Bush was stupid. I have said many times that I think the whole Texas Cowboy image is largely self-constructed. I think Bush reads Dostoevsky at 4AM on the toilet so no one can catch him. He had to pretend that he was stupid because stupid equals down-to-earth. It ingratiated him with his constituency and that's sad. Obama did a lot of things during this election, but pretending he was stupid was not one of them. Let's hope he leads us into a better age. Congratulations President Elect Barack Obama.