Hot salty tears ran down my face last night as the words of President-elect Obama--eloquent, intelligent and emotional--cooled and refreshed my long-parched pride in this amazing and wonderful social experiment we know as the United States.
Although I have had to hang my head for eight years now, listening to a man who always managed to sound less intelligent and thoughtful than he surely is or was, at last we have a leader in whom I can be proud because he is intelligent, thoughtful and articulate.
He has also sense of history, and this, to me, is particularly important quality for a leader, one that has been sorely missing from the awareness and therefore, the agenda of Mr. Bush. In a historical sense, then, Mr. Obama's statement that "The government of the people...has not perished from this Earth" was more than an appropriation of the word of Lincoln.
In a very real sense--and obviously I am merely picking up on the inference--Obama is Lincoln's successor. Now, it is of course premature and unfair to make assumptions about the nature of Obama's presidency, but it is fair to note that it is by virtue of Lincoln's vision that another junior senator from Illinois has in fact become President, despite his age and race.
The man got it right last night. If we do indeed still need proof that Mr. Lincoln was right to engage in war to preserve the Union, Mr. Obama should be it.
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