Barack Obama's triumph of hope

Barack Hussein Obama was right. "Americans ... still believe in an America where anything is possible." And they have just proved it to the world by sweeping him into the White House on a bright glittering wave of youthful energy, idealism, hope and, yes, hard cash.

They voted to break with George W. Bush's sorry legacy and to restore a nation's pride and self-confidence in what the charismatic Obama, echoing Martin Luther King, calls "the fierce urgency of now." They ushered in nothing less than a triple revolution spanning racial equality, political renewal and generational change.

Americans yesterday reshaped their very history, born in freedom and slavery, by electing their first black president, in a gesture of reconciliation and redress that left many weeping with joy – and relief.

In handing not only the White House but also Congress to the Democrats, they also rebuffed the powerful Republican neo-conservative ideology that has dominated their political life since Ronald Reagan first won election back in 1980.

Bush's serial incompetency has badly discredited an ideology that was notable for its indifference to the United Nations and its preference for hawkish unilateralism; its conviction that small government, unbridled markets and tax cuts are the answers to every problem; and its massive defence spending.

And, of course, Obama's victory marks a generational break from the long-dominant Boomer generation. Never again will a politician admit, as John McCain did, that he or she can't use a computer. And, importantly for Americans, Obama is of the post-Vietnam generation. That means the sterile old debate about where politicians stood – for or against the war, with anti-war activist Jane Fonda or not – has now become a relic of the past.

This was America's resounding reply to Obama's call 48 hours before the vote: "I ask you to believe, not just in my ability to bring about change, but in yours." Yesterday Americans celebrated themselves, as an admiring world looked on.

For McCain, the decent old Republican warrior, defeat is bitter but not shameful.

Americans craved change after Bush's reckless imperial presidency, and the damage he did to U.S. interests by invading Iraq on a lie and by throwing legal rights to the winds. They recoiled from his careless governance that allowed New Orleans to sink and the Wall Street credit crisis to go viral. From the start, the campaign was the Democrats' to lose, even though Obama arrives in the Oval Office with one of the thinnest résumés in presidential history.

While most Canadians cheered for Obama over McCain, Prime Minister Stephen Harper may have less reason to celebrate.

In Bush, Harper had an ally on such issues as the Middle East, free trade and go-slow efforts to curb climate change. Under Obama, the United States may tilt in very different directions. Democrats likely will push for protectionism and a "thicker" border that impedes the flow of people, goods and services. Harper may face pressure, as well, to keep troops in Afghanistan past our 2011 exit date.

But Canadian concerns were the last thing on U.S. minds yesterday.

Obama's historic win, and the Democrat majority in Congress, may not be "bigger than life itself," as Deddrick Battle, an African-American janitor, told the New York Times. But it is very big.

Ever the optimists, Americans are realizing part of Martin Luther King's dream, healing their collective hurt, affirming their multicultural identity, rejuvenating their politics and leavening governance with compassion.

How far Obama can meet the dizzy expectations he fanned during the $2 billion race for the presidency is another matter.

At root, his instincts both in terms of American domestic and foreign policy are more Main Street than revolutionary. He has no magic formula to heal a slumping U.S. economy and make good on $1 trillion in promised tax cuts and new spending, much less to improve America's image abroad by successfully concluding wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, exorcising Islamist extremism and 9/11 terror, weaning the U.S. from its Mideast oil addiction, containing Iran's nuclear ambitions or cooling a warming planet. It will all be a hard slog.

And from day one he will face painful choices: How much tax relief and spending can the nation's broken budget absorb? How much mortgage relief? How much for health care, education, infrastructure, green initiatives? And how far does he dare disappoint?

"They said our sights were set too high," Obama often said during the campaign. They were wrong, about his winning the presidency at least. Obama's task now, as the 44th president, will be to prove them wrong about his agenda, too.