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I thought a lot on Election Day about limitations, how we as Americans agreed both explicitly and implicitly, from the nation’s founding, that a black man would never become president. Masters certainly knew it. And from the wretched status to which they were consigned, the slaves no doubt could scarcely imagine it.

Yet, in a political campaign that began with most African Americans pooh-poohing the possibility that whites would vote for a black man and with large numbers of whites suddenly ready to do just that, Barack Obama tapped into the perfect historic moment of cross-racial yearning.

It has left me feeling bittersweet at what came before, for I have been forced to admit a truth to myself about racism and its limiting impact. I realized, quite sadly, that I had dutifully voted every four years for a parade of white male presidential candidates while scarcely lamenting the fact that this office remained the hardest, highest, most coveted barrier against the full and unfettered participation of non-whites in our political system.

Because I never believed that white voters would elevate a person of color to the presidency in my lifetime, I had in effect accepted the “whites-only” rule of the presidency. I’m embarrassed to say: What a triumph of racism!
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So I think it is only fitting to “unpack” this idea of limitations, to dissect this thing that will, of course, still plague us but that now will lack its old power.

Let’s face it. Racial limitations have defined our psyches as Americans. For African Americans especially, we have always had to consider the limits of our personal and collective ambitions; to think about just how far we could and could not expect to excel in a nation where racism has been so historically present. Without such calculation, it would have been impossible just to survive.

The slave had to know the physical limits of the plantation and had to know how to circumscribe his behavior to avoid the lash. After slavery, we had to be damned certain to understand the limits of our so-called freedom, especially when Reconstruction turned to ethnic cleansing and Jim Crow was let loose on the land.

Later, in the modern era, we had to know when voting would be deadly—the ultimate limitation. And we had to know how hard to push, to fight, to secure our rights, to test the limits of America’s promise. We risked the blows that took too many lives, until, at last, we won full rights in the 1960s. We were protected by the Constitution. And we could vote—for whomever we chose, black or white.

And yet, we always knew that the ultimate prize of our political system was off-limits. Not by law, not by decree, but by long-held custom. Shirley Chisholm ran. Jesse Jackson ran. But white America (and back then such a monolithic group was far more real than today) wasn’t having it. Racism was its limitation.

Before Barack Obama, everyone I know did not expect to see a president of color in our lifetime. We had grown accustomed to the racial limitations of these United States. We could attend college, get good jobs, send our kids to private schools, purchase large homes, write high literature, become sports superstars, Hollywood icons and CEOs. But president? Get real.

Obama has proved us wrong.

Perhaps he had not been jaded in the way that so many other African Americans have been because of our experience with limitations. Obama grew up differently. Yes, he knew of racist barriers, and, yes, he experienced racism in his life, we learn from his memoir, Dreams of My Father.

But although he embraces African-American identity and culture, he is a biracial person whose black Kenyan father was absent and who was raised by his white American mother and grandparents. He would not have absorbed the parental racial angst like so many of the rest of us, hearing our parents’ message, whether subtle or overt, about what white folks wouldn’t let us do.

And he is not a descendant of slaves—at least not here in America, though one can’t discount the possibility that Obama’s Kenyan ancestors were raided perhaps by Arab or other slave traders who once pillaged that region of Africa. If such a history exists and Obama, who grew up with little contact with the Kenyan side of his family, is aware of it, he has not publicly discussed it.

Because of this different kind of background, he would not know that deep well of unspoken African-American pain passed down since slavery days, from generation to generation. Such cultural knowledge is both a strength, and, at times, a source of self-limitation that only compounds the corrosive effect of the limits imposed on us by white society.

And one of the most heartbreaking effects of self-limitation is its atrophying impact on young African Americans. Why try, if I’m only going to face racism? Why venture beyond my cultural comfort zone if they (the big white they) don’t want me there?

What Obama’s candidacy and victory prove is that they, too, have changed; they, too, have broken through some barriers. Like the elderly white man wearing the huge Obama button who recently approached me in the parking lot of the local grocery store. Tapping his big button, he asked: “You gonna vote for my guy?” I said, “For sure!” And as we chatted a bit about the campaign, he touched my arm and said: “You know, I was raised in Arkansas and everything was segregated. I am so proud to be able to vote for an African American.” I felt proud, too, to be able to experience such a moment. To witness a barrier falling, a limitation being let go.

My Election Day bitter sweetness has passed. I now marvel at all the cross-racial jubilation washing over the nation and the new dialogues about race and country that Obama’s victory has sparked. In an e-mail evoking the spirit of South Africa’s first democratic election, a friend in Johannesburg wrote, “Yesterday we woke up yet again (the last time being April, 1994, for me) to a new world filled with promise.”

Quietly, privately, through years of defensive bluster and agitation about race, I have longed for a time like this—a new American dawning. I am holding on tight to this precious, precious moment.

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Now that Barack Obama has claimed the presidency, it’s natural to wonder how and with whom he will govern. To pull America out of the multiple and mounting crises that it now confronts, he needs the House and Senate to be a well-oiled legislative machine. The fresh wave of Democratic candidates that surged into Congress this election is a good first sign that change is coming to Washington.

In January, Democrats will begin the 111th Congress with more members than any party has held in 14 years. And in many cases it was unprecedented minority turnout that bequeathed President-elect Barack Obama a Congress that will have his back.

Suffice it to say, history brought company. Black turnout on Tuesday was seismic; roughly 17 million—and counting—African Americans voters elevated their share of the electorate from 11 percent in 2004 to 13 percent this cycle. (All non-white voters made up 26 percent of the electorate, another record.) Obama won 96 percent of the black vote, banking almost the entire 17 million into his vote total of nearly 64 million votes—itself the highest ever in American presidential politics.

In the days before the election, a Florida GOP county chairman, worried about the energized black electorate, circulated a nasty e-mail to Republicans about “the threat” of “carloads of black Obama supporters coming from the inner city to cast their votes.”

It was that enthusiasm that made the difference. Florida, where more than half a million black registered voters stayed home in 2004, went to Obama handily on the strength of the increase in black participation—22 percent of early voters were black, though they comprise only 13 percent of the state’s voters. Similar turnout gains were reported in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

But blacks didn’t run up the popular vote total just for Obama. North Carolina, where relatively unknown state legislator Kay Hagan ousted incumbent Republican Elizabeth Dole by a healthy 8-point margin, is the biggest testament to the impact of increased black organizing and participation. Much of Hagan’s support came from new voters and black voters—about a quarter of the state’s population—voting Democratic straight down the ticket. The massive black registration and get-out-the-vote push from Team Obama—begun prior to an impressive primary win in early May and strengthened throughout the summer—proved enough to overcome the state’s natural conservatism and seize the seat once held by Jesse Helms. It paid dividends in other ways: Two years ago, congressional candidate Larry Kissell lost to five-term Republican Robin Hayes by 329 votes in the 8th district; this year the uptick in Democratic voting gave Kissell a 10-point victory over Hayes.

Other races, particularly in southern states, followed the same trend. In Louisiana, Mary Landrieu had been called the “most vulnerable” Senate Democrat up for re-election. Yet as Democratic turnout projections became clearer (early voting, dominated by black voters, was at 169 percent of the 2004 total), she began to pull away. And though Democrats Donald Cazayoux, Bruce Lunsford and Ronnie Musgrove all lost, black Democratic votes gave each of them a fighting chance in heavily red states (Louisiana, Kentucky and Mississippi, respectively). Black turnout in Cincinnati helped flip the seat of longtime conservative congressman Steve Chabot, part of the GOP class of 1994, to Democrat Steve Driehaus. In Mississippi, freshman congressman Travis Childers held onto the seat he won in a special election in May—one of the early harbingers of the Democratic landslide of Tuesday night.

Another state to keep an eye on is Georgia, where Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss continues to fend off a strong Democratic challenge. Even though Chambliss is ahead of his Democratic opponent, Jim Martin, he won less than 50 percent of the vote and by Georgia law must face a runoff on Dec. 2 if those numbers hold. Paper ballots were still being counted. This would be the same Chambliss who, just days before the election, fretted to a white crowd that “the other folks are voting.” He presumably meant black residents of Georgia—and he was absolutely right. Black participation dwarfed 2004 turnout numbers. By the Saturday before Election Day, some 31 percent of registered voters had already cast ballots—with black voters making up a majority of these votes. This was enough to put Martin within striking distance of the incumbent Chambliss.

The coattail effect cuts both ways. In Virginia, popular former governor and Senate candidate Mark Warner was able to help Obama further up the ballot in regions where he attracted moderate, predominantly white voters to the Democratic side. This, coupled with solid black turnout, especially around Richmond and in the Washington, D.C., exurbs, helped give Obama a clear 5-point margin of victory in a state that had not been carried by a Democratic presidential nominee since 1964. Democrats also picked up two GOP House seats in military-heavy Virginia Beach and in the rapidly diversifying Fairfax County in northern Virginia.

In the West, minority participation also played a large role in delivering much-coveted Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada into the Obama column. Nearly 66 percent of Latinos supported Obama, cutting into John McCain’s share of that vote compared with George W. Bush’s; in 2004, Bush took two of every five Latino votes. Down ballot, this means that such long-serving conservatives as Rep. Marilyn Musgrave in Colorado and Rep. Jon Porter in Nevada are out. In New Mexico, all three of the state’s congressional seats are suddenly blue.

The Democratic surge was clearly not limited to just black voters. In Montana, Vermont and Nebraska, where there are virtually no black voters, Democrats made an average gain of about 8 points over their 2004 performance. And it’s unclear whether black turnout will remain as potent an electoral force past Obama’s historic run. But in 2008, the impact of a 2 percent national increase in representation was significant and decisive.

What about the future? First, Tuesday’s results mean that redistricting after the 2010 Census will benefit Democrats. Second, Obama’s victory could shake the presumption that black politicians such as Artur Davis and Harold Ford Jr., rumored to be contemplating runs in Alabama and Tennessee, cannot win statewide races in the South.

Most importantly, by helping to cement the progressive congressional shift that began in 2006, especially in the Senate, minority voters may have improved the chances that Washington will actually get something done this time around.

Berbagi

It has become a near mantra for the president-elect: “We have only one president at a time.” But as the last days of the Bush administration dwindle away, it looks more and more like that one president is Barack Obama. Over the weekend, while Bush was flipping a coin at the Army/Navy game, Obama was publicly laying out a vision for reviving the economy and America’s role in the world. And if his fast-graying hair is any indication, he is already taking the new job very seriously.

In his most wide-ranging policy interview since he was elected, Obama rambled extensively on the economy, the troubles in Southeast Asia, the U.S.-Russian relationship, the terms under which the U.S. should engage Iran and his plan to bring jazz and poetry to the White House.

In the interview, taped Saturday in Chicago and broadcast Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Obama said he expected the economy to get worse before it got better; that his task in fixing it will be easier than what President Roosevelt faced in the 1930s; and that despite their own strategic mistakes, he believes that U.S. auto manufacturers are the “backbone of American manufacturing” and deserve government help to survive their current problems.

Obama’s facility with the facts and his quick and elaborate analyses of the world he will confront as president seems a striking departure from what we have come to expect during President Bush’s tenure. The Obama presidency, it was easy to imagine watching the interview, could become a series of wonky seminars on domestic and foreign policy, with Obama as the chief facilitator.

He was unequivocal about Osama bin Laden: “…we’ve got to get bin Laden, and we’ve got to get al-Qaeda.”

He was circumspect about taxes: “My economic team right now is examining, do we repeal that through legislation? Do we let it lapse, so that when the Bush tax cuts expire they’re not renewed when it comes to the wealthiest Americans? And we don’t yet know what the best approach is going to be…”

He was “heartbroken” about the issues confronting veterans: “When I reflect on the sacrifices that have been made by our veterans and I think about how so many veterans around the country are struggling, even more than those who have not served—higher unemployment rates, higher homeless rates, higher substance abuse rates, medical care that is inadequate—it breaks my heart.”

He was nuanced, but expansive, in his discussions about how to deal with Iran: “I think we need to ratchet up tough but direct diplomacy with Iran, making very clear to them that their development of nuclear weapons would be unacceptable, that their funding of terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, their threats against Israel are contrary to everything that we believe in and what the international community should accept, and present a set of carrots and sticks in, in changing their calculus about how they want to operate.”

On Saturday, on the heels of the announcement of dramatic job losses and their impact on the economy, Obama used his weekly radio address to promote a jobs recovery program he hopes Congress will act on shortly after his inauguration. He told Meet the Press moderator Tom Brokaw that what he has proposed will be the “largest infrastructure program—in roads and bridges and, and other traditional infrastructure—since the building of the federal highway system in the 1950s.”

For all the wrestling with thorny domestic and foreign policy issues, Obama also signals that he hopes to change the White House, Washington and the country in other ways. Toward the end of the interview, Obama said he and his wife, Michelle, hoped to use their influence to bring more attention to art, music and the exploration of science than exists today. Any serious attention to the arts will likely conjur up more Camelot-esque comparisons to the Kennedys. (Speaking of the Kennedys, Obama declined to weigh in on the weekend’s juiciest bit of news, that Caroline Kennedy may be interested in the Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Clinton.)

During the wide-ranging discussion, Obama showed just one flicker of weakness. Prodded by Brokaw to address the status of his smoking habit, Obama admitted that he had on occasion “fallen off the wagon.” Most Americans will likely cut the guy a break. Fighting through the longest presidential campaign in history to become the country’s first African-American president as the nation descends into economic freefall could send just about anyone out back for a smoke. But Obama assured Brokaw that he will not violate the White House smoking ban. “What I would say is, is that I have done a terrific job under the circumstances of making myself much healthier, and I think that you will not see any violations of these rules in the White House.” Of all the ethical and political lapses that have occurred in the White House in the past 16 years, a puff would hardly rank in the top 10. But here’s hoping there’s enough Nicorette around the place to keep him honest.

Berbagi

It has become a near mantra for the president-elect: “We have only one president at a time.” But as the last days of the Bush administration dwindle away, it looks more and more like that one president is Barack Obama. Over the weekend, while Bush was flipping a coin at the Army/Navy game, Obama was publicly laying out a vision for reviving the economy and America’s role in the world. And if his fast-graying hair is any indication, he is already taking the new job very seriously.

In his most wide-ranging policy interview since he was elected, Obama rambled extensively on the economy, the troubles in Southeast Asia, the U.S.-Russian relationship, the terms under which the U.S. should engage Iran and his plan to bring jazz and poetry to the White House.

In the interview, taped Saturday in Chicago and broadcast Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Obama said he expected the economy to get worse before it got better; that his task in fixing it will be easier than what President Roosevelt faced in the 1930s; and that despite their own strategic mistakes, he believes that U.S. auto manufacturers are the “backbone of American manufacturing” and deserve government help to survive their current problems.

Obama’s facility with the facts and his quick and elaborate analyses of the world he will confront as president seems a striking departure from what we have come to expect during President Bush’s tenure. The Obama presidency, it was easy to imagine watching the interview, could become a series of wonky seminars on domestic and foreign policy, with Obama as the chief facilitator.

He was unequivocal about Osama bin Laden: “…we’ve got to get bin Laden, and we’ve got to get al-Qaeda.”

He was circumspect about taxes: “My economic team right now is examining, do we repeal that through legislation? Do we let it lapse, so that when the Bush tax cuts expire they’re not renewed when it comes to the wealthiest Americans? And we don’t yet know what the best approach is going to be…”

He was “heartbroken” about the issues confronting veterans: “When I reflect on the sacrifices that have been made by our veterans and I think about how so many veterans around the country are struggling, even more than those who have not served—higher unemployment rates, higher homeless rates, higher substance abuse rates, medical care that is inadequate—it breaks my heart.”

He was nuanced, but expansive, in his discussions about how to deal with Iran: “I think we need to ratchet up tough but direct diplomacy with Iran, making very clear to them that their development of nuclear weapons would be unacceptable, that their funding of terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, their threats against Israel are contrary to everything that we believe in and what the international community should accept, and present a set of carrots and sticks in, in changing their calculus about how they want to operate.”

On Saturday, on the heels of the announcement of dramatic job losses and their impact on the economy, Obama used his weekly radio address to promote a jobs recovery program he hopes Congress will act on shortly after his inauguration. He told Meet the Press moderator Tom Brokaw that what he has proposed will be the “largest infrastructure program—in roads and bridges and, and other traditional infrastructure—since the building of the federal highway system in the 1950s.”

For all the wrestling with thorny domestic and foreign policy issues, Obama also signals that he hopes to change the White House, Washington and the country in other ways. Toward the end of the interview, Obama said he and his wife, Michelle, hoped to use their influence to bring more attention to art, music and the exploration of science than exists today. Any serious attention to the arts will likely conjur up more Camelot-esque comparisons to the Kennedys. (Speaking of the Kennedys, Obama declined to weigh in on the weekend’s juiciest bit of news, that Caroline Kennedy may be interested in the Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Clinton.)

During the wide-ranging discussion, Obama showed just one flicker of weakness. Prodded by Brokaw to address the status of his smoking habit, Obama admitted that he had on occasion “fallen off the wagon.” Most Americans will likely cut the guy a break. Fighting through the longest presidential campaign in history to become the country’s first African-American president as the nation descends into economic freefall could send just about anyone out back for a smoke. But Obama assured Brokaw that he will not violate the White House smoking ban. “What I would say is, is that I have done a terrific job under the circumstances of making myself much healthier, and I think that you will not see any violations of these rules in the White House.” Of all the ethical and political lapses that have occurred in the White House in the past 16 years, a puff would hardly rank in the top 10. But here’s hoping there’s enough Nicorette around the place to keep him honest.

Berbagi

It’s been amusing but not necessarily edifying, to watch Barack Obama’s foes and friends attempt to define his presidency before he has even been sworn in.

Right-wing commentators reassure themselves that his victory somehow confirms that the U.S. remains a “center-right nation.” Their counterparts on the left debate whether he should model himself more on Franklin Roosevelt than on Lincoln—or vice versa.

Some have even already predicted that he will be only a one-term president.

It’s time for all the prognosticators to shut up, and let the man do his job.
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He’s already defining himself. And he is already taking charge.

The economic team he is putting in place is a good example.

As he demonstrated during his campaign, Obama is a one-of-a-kind political leader confronting a unique political challenge. Trying to fit him into established paradigms obscures our understanding of the task that confronts him. We need to see both the man and the situation anew, guided by history but not shackled by it.

This is not our daddy’s mess or our grand-daddy’s mess. It’s ours.

The truth is that Obama is going to have to feel his way through the mess woven by George W. Bush’s inept regime. Neither the New Deal nor supply-side economics offers a roadmap.

The best Obama can do is ignore ideology and try various approaches until he finds ones that work. He seems to know that. That’s why he stands a good chance of confounding critics who are already trying to put him in a box.

He is surrounding himself with aides who bristle with what David Brooks, the conservative columnist for the New York Times, calls practical creativity. As Brooks writes, they are “people who can give the president a list of concrete steps he can do day by day to advance American interests.”

That’s just what’s needed now—officials who want to get the job done, not win a partisan debate. Treasury Secretary choice Timothy F. Geithner, senior White House economics adviser designee Lawrence H. Summers and budget director pick Peter R. Orszag are that kind of people.

So let’s all get a grip and think about what we can reasonably expect—and demand—from an Obama administration. It’s not, at this point, so much a list of specific policies, as it is a new kind of leadership—starting with a change in tone.

Every new president promises to inaugurate a new era of bipartisan compromise, and Obama promised to appoint Republicans to his cabinet, and may even retain Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates.

But more important, it means doing away with the high-handed attitude of a presidency that believed it was above the law, wrapped itself in the flag while undermining the nation’s most treasured values and lied us into an unnecessary war that has cost thousands of lives, billions of dollars and the respect of much of the world.

As the first president of the post-Baby Boom generation, Obama’s victory can be read as a mandate for finally turning the page on the tired culture wars that have warped our politics since the 1960s.

Barring an unforeseen foreign emergency, Obama’s foremost priority will certainly be restoring the health of the economy. He is already moving toward a huge stimulus program, equal or bigger in size to the $700 billion bailout of the credit markets. His goal is to create 2.5 million new jobs over the next two years, by putting people to work repairing the nation’s roads, highways and bridges as well building new green technology and alternative-energy sources.  He may push ahead with revolutionary health-care reform and tax relief for middle-class families. He may accelerate the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq.

These are big proposals. But the specifics are less important than the attitude of Obama’s administration. The deepest flaw of Bush’s regime was its cocksure certainty, its arrogant unwillingness to change course in the face of contrary evidence, its propensity to impose moralistic political considerations upon scientific issues such as stem-cell research and global warming.

Undoing such a disastrous legacy will require candor, self-confidence and a degree of humility from the new president—and patience from his supporters.

Obama has promised us that kind of leadership. He is not waiting for Bush to leave to start making good on the pledge.

It will be easier for him to deliver if we all grow up a bit, stop prejudging and wait to see what he actually does.

Berbagi