America may have faltered in its efforts to export democracy, but this time, at home, it has delivered a master class in the real thing, said The Times in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:
When the moment came, TV panelists who had talked volubly all evening suddenly found it hard to say a word. In Grant Park, Chicago, Jesse Jackson wept. Nearby, an assemblyman from the Illinois black caucus was asked what the election meant for him. “Now I can look my grandchildren in the eye,” he said simply. “And I can tell them, if they want to, they can be president, too.”
On Tuesday night, with a countdown to precisely 10 p.m. Chicago time, American democracy transformed in an instant not only the hopes and expectations of African Americans, but also the self-image of their country and their country’s image in the world.
Barack Obama stepped out to accept his city’s rapturous acclaim a few minutes later. “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible . . .” he began, but at that moment it seemed no one did doubt it — anywhere. Bedlam had already taken hold in cities across the US, in Berlin, where Sen. Obama drew a crowd of 200,000 when merely a candidate, and from Japan to Kenya, where his extended family now awaits their invitation to the inauguration.
Within hours Gordon Brown and David Cameron were vying in the House of Commons for scraps of the President-elect’s reflected glory. In Moscow, by contrast, in an 85-minute state-of-the-nation address, President Medvedev made no mention of the US election. Small wonder. Nothing is more alarming to the stage managers of phony democracies than the sight of real ones sweeping entire political classes from the stage in a day of bloodless voting.
