Obamaism

I know I've been blogging about Barack Obama ad nauseum, but it's only been about 10 days, and I'm still buzzing from the victory, so bear with me.

Anyway, New York Magazine has a cover story on Barack Obama that I enjoyed quite a bit:

When we were growing up, the future was the 21st century, and the future was going to astonish us.

And so it has, eight years in, and not just with whiz-bang gadgets. We were astonished by the attacks of September 11. By the administration’s bungling of the Iraq War. By Hurricane Katrina’s scale of destruction and the administration’s incompetent response. By the realization that global warming is possibly out of control. By the teetering of the global financial system.

Yet none of the 21st century’s OMFG events has been any more astonishing than what happened last week. Not just a Democratic president, but one elected with the third largest majority of any Democrat in the past one hundred years; not just a resoundingly victorious Democrat who lacks (for the first time since most voters were born) a southern accent, but who nevertheless won three southern states; not just a big-city northern Democrat whose name recognition was close to zero 1,500 days ago, but an eloquent Ivy League intellectual; and, of course, not just an unknown smooth-talking pointy-headed neoliberal with an exotic upbringing, but, yes, an African-American.

It is pretty remarkable that a black man won a majority of voters and Indiana and Virginia, which last went Democrat in 1964, the year the Civil Rights Act became law. I never would have thought it would have been possible. But then again politicians like Barack Obama come around once in a lifetime.