A World Away and a Heartbeat Apart

Well the roar heard around the world is finally dieing down. I no longer get congratulated by every Czechs I meet. No, I did nothing monumental. I am simply an American and as a nation we made a gigantic statement a few weeks ago when we elected Barack Obama. My son was concerned that it might be interrupted as saying that racism was no longer a problem in the US. I really don't think that anyone, with any insight will believe that. If fact I never saw it as a rasist thing at all. The election was more a reaffirmation of a concept that seems to have gotten lost in the last 30 or 40 years. That is the concept that American is not a country of ilitist,..that it is a country that is governed by the people,..all the people. That anyone, any color, any race, religion, sexual preference, political belief can aspire and can achieve. That is the bull-shit that we profess but until the election, it had been a long time since I felt that we were actually practicing it. I think for most Americans, the election was the reality of what we were taught in grade school. It was a very strong statement here in the Czech Republic.
One of the classes that I teach is a converstation class. Each week, I prepare a topic that we then discuss. The week before the election, I scoured the internet and put together what I could find on the postion of McCain and Obama on all of the important issues, 15 of them,..including global warming, education, nuclear energy, ecology, the economy, the war and terroism, stem cell research, etc. Then each student was given one area. They read the information on both candidates and presented to the class what the candidates position was on the issue. After the presentation of the issue, each student privately voted just on that issue,.. deciding if they wanted a person with that piosition to lead their country. When we had covered all of the issues, they added up their votes to reach a decision on which candidate they would support. I'm not sure how many American's did this careful analysis of the issues. Anyway the result was that 27 voted for Obama and 1 for McCain. This seems to be the general sentiment in this country. Some of that may be their desire for change. Bush is not well liked here and Obama offered a change.
Now, however comes the real test,..can he deliver. Everyone seems to be overly concerned about that. I am not. Government is not small business, it will function as it always has and there are many great minds working together on the issues. Obama has already delivered the greatest good he can for the country. He taught us to once again believe that we can make a difference, that we can count, that we can achieve the unbelievable. Perhaps his legacy is not how good of a administrator he will be but in how good of a leader he will be, how much will he inspire us, and how much he once again makes us proud to be an American. It's been a long time.