sometimes I can't help myself
According to CNN last night, virtually everyone will remember where they were when Obama made his acceptance speech after his convincing Presidential election victory. Hmmmm, methinks thou dost pronounce too much. After a few years of being a political junky and seeing more elections than I would care to reveal, one thing I know is that you can't decide beforehand on the importance or relevance of an election result. There is usually some euphoria and just plain relief immediately following, which often includes a fair amount of hyperbole, which was in great evidence on the American networks last night as reporter after reporter fawned over the new President-elect. That's all well and good but history will judge the importance of the 2008 election and no crystal ball can predict the events ahead of us except to say that we are in very challenging times - world-wide. Something else we can say with certainty is that expectations placed on one man's shoulders have never been higher or heavier.
The race issue aside - and it's hard to fault black America for its current wave of emotion and sense of pride - events have a way of creating the success or failure of U.S. presidents rather than the other way around. Being head of the most powerful nation on earth is a little like being an ocean liner in a bathtub - impossible not to notice it but almost impossible to turn it. Let's hope that our neighbour can get beyond its preponderence for "playing" politics and actually move into an era of "doing what's right" because it is the right thing to do. They (and we) have little time for blame, nitpicking and apple polishing - get it right - get it done and then we will worry about whether or not this is some sort of shining moment that we will remember forever.
Good luck to us all.
No comments:
Post a Comment