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Well done, America!

Fakhruddin Ahmed
HISTORY was made on Tuesday (November 4) at 11 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (10 a.m. Wednesday morning in Bangladesh). Barack Obama had already won over 200 Electoral College votes by then. When polls closed in California (55 Electoral College votes), Oregon (7), Washington (11), and Hawaii (4) at that hour, the networks immediately called all those states for Obama, hurtling him past the winning target of 270 Electoral College votes, and proclaimed Obama the 44th president of the United States.
The whole world burst into spontaneous applause and cele-
bration. For America, the celebrations were a mixture of New Year's Day festivities, and collective relief, reminiscent of that following the end ofWorld War II when strangers hugged and kissed each other on the streets of New York City.
Indeed, Americans view the election of their first African-American president as the dawning of a new era and the ending of America's eight-year national nightmare. Henceforth, American politics will be defined as "Before Obama” or "After Obama."
America had to overcome too much bad history and too high mental hurdle to elect its first African-American president. If Bangladesh elects a member of the minority community, a Hindu for
instance, as its prime minister (something I hope will happen very soon), that will not make news, because in an egalitarian society like Bangladesh where the majority and most of the minorities are ethnically and racially of the same stock, everyone is considered social equals.
It is a little harder for the former European colonial powers like Britain, France, and Italy to consider darker people, once they ruled over, who are now living in their country, to be their equals. Having attended graduate school in England, the writer can attest to that.
It is much harder for many Caucasian Americans to accept the descendents of their one-time
slaves, the present day African-Americans, as their equals. That is why, when President Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves in the 1860s, he also freed white Americans from practicing an immoral injustice.
When white America elected Barack Obama its president, it freed white Americans from the shackles of their remaining prejudice. After Obama's presidential victory, not only are African-Americans walking tall, white Americans, too, are walking tall!
There is a consensus among blacks and whites that they never thought they would live to see the day when a black man was elected the highest executive of their nation. The writer takes a contrary view. African-Americans have held statewide office for a long time. Before Barack Obama, Hiram Revels (1870-71), Blanche K. Bruce (1875-81), Edward Brooke (1967-79), and Carol Moseley Braun (1992-98) (like Obama also from the state of Illinois), were US senators.
African-American P.B.S. Pinchbeck was the governor of Louisiana in 1872. Douglas Wilder
was elected governor of the Confederate state of Virginia in 1989. Currently, there are two African-American governors in the US -- Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and David Patterson of New York (first elected as lieutenant governor).
It was. therefore, not a question of whether America would elect an African-American president; it was when the right African-American would run for the office of the presidency. Barack Obama turned out to be that perfect candidate; an African-American whites could vote for.
Granted, that Barack Obama is not a typical African-American helped. Although Barack Obama considers himself a real African-American and has embraced its culture, the fact remains that Obama's mother was white and he was raised by his white maternal grandparents from Kansas. (Obama's grandma died two days before he was elected president; a week before the election Obama suspended his campaign to visit his ailinggrandma in Hawaii.)
America did not give Barack Obama a pass. On the contrary,
president-elect Obama and the future first lady Michelle Obama are academically the most qualified couple to ever grace the White House. Barack Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School. Michelle Obama’s academic pedigree is even higher; she is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. They are smart!
Barack Obama will need all his smarts to get America out of the ditch the previous occupant of the White House has gotten it into. Obama understands that. In his victory speech at Grant Park, he sounded more somber than celebratory. The magnitude of the problems that await the next president is monumental.
Great obstacles present great opportunities. Like Abraham Lincoln (civil war) and Franklin Roosevelt (depression) before him, Barack Obama will be taking over the reins of a country in dire straits. If he can navigate the country safely though the shoals to safety and prosperity, like his Illinois idol Lincoln, Obama has the potential to be a great president.
America has given Barack Obama a mandate through a landslide. Apart from winning the Northeast, West Coast and the Great Lake states, Obama has also won "red” (Republican) states like Indiana and Virginia (the first time a Democrat has done so since 1964), as well as Ohio, North Carolina. Florida, Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada.
Obama won 364 Electoral College votes to McCain's 173 (one vote is yet to be allotted). Obama defeated McCain by a margin of 7%; 53% to 46%. He received 8 million more popular votes than McCain -- 64 million to 56 million. Obama received 43% of the white votes; more than Gore or Kerry; equal to Bill Clinton. Except in the poor Appalachian regions, more whites across the nation voted for Obama than did for John Kerry in 2004. So much for the Bradley effect!
Obama's coat-tails increased the Democratic Party majority in the House from 236 to 259. In the Senate, Democrats increased their majority from 51 to 57, with three more races either too close to call, or undergoing recount or will be decided in a runoff next month.
Obama has earned complete freedom to execute his legislative agenda.
As Obama selects his cabinet, his first focus will be to fix the economy. What Obama wants his legacy to be is his energy policy. Through an initial investment of $15 billion. Obama wants to wean America away from its addiction to fossil fuels towards alternate energy sources such as solar energy.
As Barack Obama assembles the government machinery to take America to yet another exciting new frontier, America and the world can now exhale for a while. The world has always marveled at America's pioneering excellence in innovation and technology. It never expected America to take the lead social reconciliation. Now that it has, hats off to America! To paraphrase Neil Armstrong in a completely different context, the election of Barack Obama as president may be a small step for racial harmony in America, it is truly a giant leap for race relations worldwide.
Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed s a Rhodes schol* and Daly Star columnist