WASHINGTON: Sen. Barack Obama, 47, the first-term senator from Illinois, defeated Sen. John McCain of Arizona, 72, a former prisoner of war who was making his second bid for the presidency.
Until the very end, McCain's campaign was eclipsed by an opponent who was nothing short of a phenomenon, who drew huge, enthusiastic crowds epitomized by the tens of thousands of people who turned out Tuesday night to hear Obama's victory speech in Grant Park in Chicago.
McCain delivered a poignant concession speech under clear skies on the lush lawn of the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, where he and his wife held their wedding reception.
The scene there was decidedly sour. At several points during his speech, McCain, unsmiling, had to motion his crowd to quiet down - holding out both hands, palms down - when they responded to McCain's words of tribute to Obama with boos.
The nation's faltering economy seemed to weigh in voters' minds: A survey of voters leaving polling places found that 6 in 10 said this was their dominant concern, a reflection of the economic collapse that provided the backdrop for the general election contest. Also, President Bush, who has the lowest popularity rating in recent presidential history, is also said to have pulled down McCain's popularity.
All who know him say that McCain is a survivor. As a Navy pilot, he crashed three times in three different planes and walked away from them all without a scratch. Once, while sitting in his jet on the deck of the USS Forester, a rocket from another plane hit and exploded his plane. McCain managed to escape the flames; 134 other men died.
And when he ejected from his jet over Hanoi, he broke both arms and a leg, fell into a lake only to be pulled out by hostile Vietnamese villagers who beat him unconscious. He ended up in the infamously brutal prison, the 'Hanoi Hilton,' where, at one point during his 5 years of imprisonment, he weighed less than 100 pounds.
But in the end, he couldn't stop the forces of change.
"It is highly doubtful that anyone will ever have to run in a worse political climate than this one John McCain had to run in this year, Steve Schmidt, McCain's told strategist, told reporters.
"The president's approval numbers were not helpful in the race, but the party as a whole is unpopular with the American people and that was a big albatross," Schmidt said. "I don't think there's another Republican the party could have nominated that could have made this a competitive race the way that John McCain did."
But McCain also made his own missteps. His choice of a political neophyte as his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, was initially applauded by party leaders, but was quickly turned into a parody on "Saturday Night Live."
Schmidt balked when asked whether he was happy with Gov. Palin's performance as McCain's running mate. "I'm not going to go there," he said. "There'll be time enough for the post-mortems in the race."
McCain also made a misstep when he suspended his campaign to rush back to Washington to try to broker a deal on an economic rescue package, which many in Congress and the media dismissed as reactive.
McCain tried mightily to declare his independence from President Bush, but aides said he was never able to cut free form that weight, and the polls on Tuesday confirmed that. He will return to his Washington as Senator of Arizona.
