“The choice in this election isn't between tax cuts and no tax cuts. It's about whether you believe we should only reward wealth or we should also reward the work and the workers who give it," he said. "John McCain calls this socialistic. I call it opportunity."
(Sen Barack Obama, just a few days before Nov 4th 2008, election day)
Nov 4 2008 has turned out to become a day of great hope and anticipation. Ever since I spotted Barack Obama in the summer of 2007, I have set my hopes on his election, as did so many other people once he caught their eyes and their imagination.
But I never dared to hope too strongly. The sense of pain after John Kerry lost the elections in 2004 was far to great to ever wish to experience it again. Yet, over the past few months, Obama’s chances of winning the presidency became ever more serious. And still I did not dare to project his ultimate victory. Only tonight the floodgate of hope and anticipation finally burst open.
Barack Obama represents opportunity as it only rarely has reached the office of the US President. Obviously there is no way we can say that he will seeze all the opportunities ahead, as on his way he will have to successfully tackle many issues – severe stumblingblocks -, largely the legacy of his Republican predecessor George W. Bush. In doing so, the main thrust of his initial months as the US President should not be to further enstrange the public from this recent past, but to offer reconciliation.
Still, however this may be, Mr Obama will be the first US President in many years to inspire a great many people around the world who will take his election as a wake up call to ignite new imagination into our world in all dimensions.
I have often made the comparison between the atmosphere – and opportunities – of our present time with those of the early sixties, when I was still a young boy with an emerging awareness of the greater world around me. It was in 1963 when I first visited the United States, 11 years of age, and ever since I have been fascinated by the vibrations of entrepreneurship and imagination all around me coming out of the American soil. Mr Obama will need all these vibrations when he faces the tremendous challenges ahead, none of which need to be clarified at this point.
George W. Bush enjoyed a silver spoon upbringing and his presidency started off with a healthy America delivered on his White House doorstep. Barack Obama made this journey to Washington all by himself and he will pick up an America in financial and moral disarray, both domestically and in the world outside. It is in the interest of all Americans to cast partisan divisions aside ans start amend these huge deficiencies. Not one Barack Obama can ever complete that task. It will have to be thousands of people, from both sides of the political spectrum, to restore America’s greatness, in a new perspective and abundant with new opportunity.
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