The utterly transformative and historic moment in Chicago’s Grant Park last Tuesday night held millions around the world spellbound. The image of the newly-elected 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, his wife Michelle and two young daughters waving to the crowds was something many people genuinely thought they’d never see. An African-American first family. A Black man who finally and most decisively achieved whatever this mythical “American dream” represented. A 20-month-old campaign was finally over, and Barack Hussein Obama triumphed, winning not only the popular vote on Tuesday but also the electoral vote by a margin of more than 2 to 1. Obama won in states that had not voted for a Democrat since 1964. The Commonwealth of Virginia, where the capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War stood, went for Obama, as did North Carolina. As did Iowa. As did many states. They voted –Americans voted in large numbers for a Black man. Even in a country where racial attitudes still exist, one of the remarkable facts about Tuesday’s election was that Americans put aside those differences and took a proud and measured chance on a new leader and a new hope. Read the rest of this entry »
From the Huffington Post this afternoon, a deliriously rich and successful prank on Sarah Palin. Montreal’s own Masked Avengers somehow got on CKOI radio and managed to snag Palin’s people on the phone with the tasty bait that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France wanted to say hello. How on earth would this possibly happen? Aren’t Palin’s people a little suspicious of a head of state using a Quebec radio station to spread a little last-minute campaign cheer? This is a radio station! Idiot DJs, only in this case the Masked Avengers have been successful before in hoodwinking celebrities like Queen Elizabeth, Jacques Chirac, Bono and Donald Trump before. With folksy Sarah Palin, they have landed on a goldmine because in the following five minutes, not only does the interviewer or the pretend-President Sarkozy not lose his composure, but Palin just keeps up that fawning, down-home charm and spunk that she’s famous for—and is essentially clueless. 
The first Presidential debate of the election season between Barack Obama and John McCain at Ole Miss was a mostly sobering, understated affair. No one tossed any pounding blows. No one came away with any killer lines. There was, I think, a fairly decisive victor but it wasn’t necessarily because of debating skill or technique. This was to be a battle between the 72-year-old McCain and the much younger upstart Obama, the former clearly one with experience in the Senate dealing with the evening’s theme, foreign policy and national security. Obama, by contrast, had to be seen as the distinct challenger and there is evidence that his poll leads have not been as high because voters have taken his relative lack of experience to heart. McCain clearly tried to expose this vulnerability as much as possible. But Obama was able to hold his own against the senior senator.
Well that didn’t take long. Not even 24 hours had passed since John McCain, in only his reportedly second meeting, announced that Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska would be his running mate, that the knives have come out from all corners. While social conservative types like Pat Buchanan (whom Palin supported in 2000) and Rush Limbaugh are beyond themselves in rapturous excitement, much of the media and other rational heads have called the pick the single biggest political gamble they had ever seen in modern American history. Ed Rollins, former Reagan henchman and former supporter of Mike Huckabee, has admitted just as much. David Gergen, former administration official under both Republican and Democratic White Houses, an Independent and respected analyst, told Wolf Blitzer he had not seen this coming. A gamble, yes, but one that had potential to possibly ruin McCain’s chances to be President.
Morning news anchors are tripping over themselves trying to figure out who is going to be John McCain’s VP pick. This on the day after Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Denver. What should be a day after to go through highlights from that speech and provide some post-election afterglow instead becomes a masterfully calculated announcement from the McCain folks to drive the news cycle today.
