America is eager to stand tall once again

But Obama promises to escalate the Afghan war and fight terror. What sort of fresh start does he offer?

FIRST POSTED NOVEMBER 5, 2008

It was a brilliantly executed victory, achieved yesterday with not a single hiccup of worry, not one dour moment of uncertainty for Democrats that once again the prize might be snatched from their lips by racism or fraud. Equally striking was the rapidity with which one saw a new zeitgeist flaring into life on all the networks – America is a country eager to stand tall once more in the eyes of other nations. Not the nation of stolen elections, of Guantanamo, of renditions, but the nation electing a black man to the White House.

And indeed, a country with a terrible history of racism and violence has elected a black president. Looking at the ecstatic crowd in Grant Park, Chicago, the moment Obama was officially declared the certain winner, one saw with vivid force the fact that many Americans haven't had a chance to feel proud of their country for a long time, a point that Michelle Obama made several months ago and that got her into a great deal of trouble with the right wing.

Young Americans, particularly blacks and Hispanics, yearned for all the affirmations that the Obama campaign has represented and their joy was manifest and moving in Grant Park, in Times Square and other venues across the country. But equally fevered in their joy were the commentators falling over themselves to repeat the message that America is showing a new face to the world.

A country with a terrible history of racism and violence has elected a black president

What sort of face? I was struck by the first reaction to Obama's victory speech by Rachel Maddow, MSNBC's rapidly rising left-liberal star. What was the line that Maddow seized on? "I was delighted," Maddow exclaimed, "to hear him say, 'A new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down, we will defeat you'." She went on to snarl against "nihilists seeking world domination" with all the fervor of a right-wing radio shock jock or, for that matter, Bush or Cheney.

It was a salutary reminder that it was only a decade ago that liberalism's laptop bombardiers were hustling Clinton into ordering the bombing of civilian targets in the former Yugoslavia. Obama has pledged, if elected president, to escalate the US war in Afghanistan; to attack Pakistan's

The strongest parallel here is really with 1960 and John Kennedy, respository of so many youthful hopes

sovereign territory if it obstructs any unilateral US mission to kill Osama bin Laden; and to wage a war against terror in a hundred countries, creating for this purpose a new international intelligence and law enforcement "infrastructure" to take down terrorist networks. A fresh start?

The march of Empire is one thing; the ebb and flow of domestic politics quite another. Election 2008 is registering as a sea change in American politics, as big for the Democrats as was 1932 with FDR and 1964 with LBJ. Pat Buchanan, who helped invent Conservative politics back in the age of Nixon, said mournfully last night that the Conservative Revolution was over, and George Bush has been the gravedigger.

In the House, the Democrats will have a very big majority, of roughly 261 to 174, once again of huge importance in marginalising the Republicans' capacity to fight rearguard battles or side-track legislation. Nancy Pelosi will become the most powerful House leader in well over a generation. And it is the House, remember, which controls the purse strings, and it is Pelosi, not Obama, who will set the legislative agenda.

It's unclear at the time of writing whether Democrats will get the 60 seats in the Senate that will make their majority veto-proof. Some of them probably hope they won't, since then they will have Republicans to blame for legislation that fails.

One can invoke 1932 and 1964, but the strongest parallel is with John Kennedy

What shape will the new agenda take? Obama's staff are leafing through the early legislative charges of Roosevelt and Johnson. Much will depend of the selection of Treasury Secretary. One hears talk of the bankers' pal, Larry Summers. Or someone more to the left, like Laura Tyson, once head of Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors.

Since 1948 every incoming Democratic president has pledged health reform and every one of them has been routed by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Congress can easily beat off any presidential challenges to the Pentagon budget. Obama has pledged early action to close Guantanamo, end torture and renditions. But will his Secretary of State be the business-as-usual choice of someone like Richard Holbrooke, or Senator John Kerry?

In terms of political change one can invoke 1932 and 1964, but the strongest parallel here is really with 1960 and John Kennedy, respository of so many youthful hopes. Of course it wasn't long before reality caught up with the hopes, and overtook them, with deepening involvement in Vietnam and the disaster of the Bay of Pigs. There will be similar bruising engagements with reality in the months ahead, and with America in a weaker condition.

"I don't know what more we could have done to win this election," John McCain said in his farewell remarks. Actually there was a lot he could have done. He ran an awful campaign. Obama is now enveloped in an aura of inevitability, but let us raise a final toast to that vital ingredient, luck. Never was there a luckier man in the timing of economic collapse, the ultimate October surprise.

We are in for a season of overstatements. A left wing organiser called David Swanson wrote some interesting lines last night about Obama's victory in Virginia. "What put Obama over in Virginia," he wrote, "was not the end of racism, but the end of support for George W Bush, whom 72 per cent of voters said they disapproved of."

Above all else, November 4 was a day of savage rejection of a sitting president and of unbounded joy at the prospect of his imminent departure.