Clearly, "Yes We Can"

Hey! So this last Tuesday night we all took part something that should change the world forever!

Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. Thank goodness. As I was watching him speak to the crowd of well over 100,000 that gathered in Chicago to celebrate his election, I realized how much of my heart had gotten into his bid and campaign for the White House. Now, this might be a stupid way to preface what I'm about to say, but I cried in the movie Independence Day. The one with Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum and some aliens. And the Star Trek guy. I cried at the part where President Bill Pullman gets up at the airfield in the early morning light and gives that speech about "we will not go quietly into the night!" So I am a crybaby. But the tears I shed listening to President-elect Obama were quite different. I was struck by the myriad implications of the event. It seems that we, as a people, have it in us to not just say we can look past race, but to actually really look past it. So many are talking about how incredible it is that we elected a black man to be our president. I think it is incredible and beautiful that we elected such a great man to be president. Not because he is black, because he is great! Because he instilled in us a hope that we've seen politicians talk about and allude to, but never really deliver. Barack Obama delivered it.



Now analysts are picking apart the possibilities that he will be able to follow through on all the promises he made during the campaign. For the first time I feel hopeful that the new president will be able to something more groundbreaking and history-changing than just hold the White House down. I mean that not as a slight to our recent Commanders-in-Chief, but as an indication that I (and I believe many Americans) usually just take it for granted that the President will just keep doing the things that Presidents do, and we'll all probably feel mostly unaffected by it. Maybe that's not being fair to the Presidents who've served during my lifetime, but that's how I've always felt. Not now. We have the opportunity to work beside a unique person now, for the betterment of our country, our present and our future. It is my feeling that people like him don't come along every century. That he happens to be black only makes it more apparent that America is at a turning point. It appears our potential is far higher than many around the world had come to believe. We have the chance to run in the direction we pointed ourselves in when we elected Barack Obama. I say full steam ahead.