Obama:

On top after long ordeal

Philip FERNANDO

Senator Barack Obama won the U S presidency in a near landslide becoming the first black man in history to do so. The cool demeanor of the victor triumphed over the dour negativism of the vanquished. John McCain conceded defeat last night. The stunningly triumphant feat of Obama signified an epochal dousing of the country's smouldering Black and White race relations. It was like the check valve inside an alternator suddenly functioning smoothly regulating directionality of current flow. Red states turned blue inside the United States of America. Suddenly, jubilation and trumpeted exuberance overtook the nation in stark contrast to the Obama's refusal to be drawn into any vicious counter-attack on McCain for weeks.

Light emitting diodes illuminated the political landscape to mesmerise the nation by their colour-changing kinetic effects. Obama electrified the entire two-year campaign with multiple shades of gorgeous colour as his inspirational voice reached crescendo on November 4, 2008, winning the White House with consummate ease. He will become the 44th President on January 20th, 2009.

The long ordeal was like a dream. At his exotic "boutique politique," Obama the avant-garde designer offered high-performance diodes bristling on a blue circuit board, wittily mounted on a pair of pliers with the back drop of Greek columns to exemplify his political wizardry. Obama reached the magical 270 electoral votes number within two hours after the polls closed. Obama successfully dimmed all other lights that challenged him trying to outshine the march towards victory.

John McCain's problems of his own making were many. There were no McCain Ads in Florida until September; Obama out-spent him to five to one million dollars on Ads in October alone. Republicans had a voter registration edge of 280,000 in 2006, while Obama had a 660,000 in edge in 2008. That was a strategic error by McCain.

Sarah Palin was not focused. Her wardrobe was too expensive. Obama got over $ 700 million to McCain's $ 450 million in their war chests. McCain did not concentrate on early voting and let Obama beat him.

On top of all that unfettered capitalism died a natural death under eight years of Bush governance. Now the US government has a stake in ownership of banks, insurance companies and finance corporations. There are no more coddled monopolies and no more free wheeling or deregulated version of market economy, brokerages, hedge funds and non-banks. The stake on healthcare, education and infra-structure now dominates the political scene. His marquee speech on race in Philadelphia early this year defined the campaign as Obama stayed above the fray on conflicting issues. His approach to problem solving received top billing from all critics. Amidst the gruelling marathon lasting over two years, Obama had time to visit his sister Maya Soetoro-Ng and ailing grandmother Madelyn Dunham in Honolulu and talk fondly of his grandfather Stanley Dunham. His grandmother passed away yesterday. Obama often spoke of his mother S. Ann Soetoro, a teen mother who later got a Ph.D. in anthropology. She lived in Indonesia and married again. "When I think about my mother, I think that there was a certain combination of being grounded in who she was, what she believed in. But also a certain recklessness. She wasn't comfortable seeing life confined to a certain box" Obama used to say.