Perhaps hope does spring eternal after all

May I offer my American cousins who peruse this page a great big group hug and wet kiss?

Wow, wasn’t that a show?

Now, as some Canadians say, keep your stick on the ice and move on with hope in your hearts and perseverance as your mantra. For it is, as has been suggested so many times it has become cliché, that what happened yesterday was truly the dawning of a new era. A new era not only in your nation’s history, but a new era for the rest of us too. Provided it is all played as it should be played.

Unlike some of my compatriots – fortunately just a few – I love Americans as a people. I don’t always love your government and some of its attitudes, but neither do you. I have traveled extensively in the US and have never been treated badly. Indeed, I rarely feel I am in a ‘foreign’ country at all.

Anyway, love the US or not, whatever fortune befalls your nation impacts the rest of us to a huge degree, so we must pay attention. In our household we certainly watched the whole scenario unfold. It was a time of epiphany – good epiphany this time, rather than the sort that came with 9/11 in which we knew the world was going to change irrevocably, and not in a good way. Maybe yesterday was the final answer to 9/11 and it’s time to put paid to it and move on. Maybe.

For one thing, George W. staked virtually his whole governance on that tragic event, and acted accordingly. Unfortunately for all concerned. Including the rest of us that share the planet.

Of course the fact that your new president is black is also amazing. Utterly amazing. I mean, I am old enough that I remember the days of Selma and Montgomery too vividly. I had university friends who joined the Freedom Riders. I remember the assassinations of JFK, Robert, and Dr. King. I remember such names as Medgar Evers and Rosa Parks and old Orval Faubus and Little Rock Central High. Wow, again. It almost brings a tear of amazement and disbelief to my eye.

“I really hope Obama wins,” said a counseling client of mine yesterday. A client who, incidentally, happens to be black. “But, I don’t hope he wins because he is a black man, I hope he wins because he seems to offer the promise to be good; to bring about change. Quite honestly, if McCain seemed to me to be a better candidate, I would hope that he would win.” I liked that philosophically, because that is truly relegating race to the back burner, which is where it should always have been.
So, maybe it’s time for the lyrics to the anthem to become: “We did overcome!” And, symbolically, you did. You didn’t overcome everything but we did overcome a particular stigma which often cost the US credibility in the rest of the world.

At the end of the day, what the US and the rest of the world were left with after yesterday was ‘hope.’ And, in truth, hope is all we have in all our endeavors. Throw a smattering of faith in with that and maybe we can all move on.

But, I must grant a concession to the other side. John McCain was immensely gracious in defeat, and it spoke well of him. But, I would have expected nothing less of the man. He fought a good fight, made some gaffes, but was largely the victim of the times and the unfortunate Bush legacy. A Promethean task that circumstances conspired against.

To a degree I’ve admired Mr. McCain for a number of years, especially when I read of his three years of torture and agony in Vietnam. As Obama said in his acceptance speech, my opponent has undergone ordeals of which the rest of us can only imagine. So, all other things considered, I was sad for McCain. I was also said he didn’t get his chance back in 2000 when he might genuinely have had impact. Impact that ‘Junior’ was never able to muster in a positive sense.

And may Sarah go back to Alaska and be the best she can be. Thanks for the fun, babe.