Rather than stay up very late, I got up very early and have been watching the American networks. Any leftie tuning in to Fox looking for a dose of schadenfreude will be sorely disappointed. There is no sense of the anger that the left had when George W Bush won. Bill O’Reilly describes Obama as “brilliant and personable”. The commentators on the right are saluting Obama’s campaign, and sharing a sense of patriotic pride that America is so capable of renewal that it has elected a black man to be president. Here are a few quotes that have jumped out at me.
“He fought a brilliant campaign, beginning with his total befuddlement of the supposed sharpest operators in the country, the Clintons. As for us losers, there’s no point going down the right-wing version of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Any shrill vicious ad hominem invective would be much better directed at each other. The Republicans lost this election” – Mark Steyn.
“There are about 1,460 days until the next Presidential election, and I assume that I will spend approximately the next 1,459 of them opposing Barack Obama. But I’m spending today proud abut what my country has overcome.” – Jim Manzi in NRO
“I expect to be one of the most severe critics of the Obama administration and the Democrats generally… but Obama ran a brilliant race and he should be congratulated for it. It is a wonderful thing to have the first African-American president. It is a wonderful thing that in a country where feelings are so intense that power can be transferred so peacefully. Let us hope that Obama succeeds and becomes a great president, for all the right reasons.” – Jonah Goldberg.
“This is the most meaningful thing that has ever happened” – Oprah Winfrey
Okay, the Oprah quote (though real) doesn’t quite count. And one can argue that the right would be bitter had the election had been as tight as it was eight years ago. No hanging chads this time. But to me, anyway, the dominant feeling is “only in America” and this eclipses partisan sympathies. And not just the racial issue, but the sheer audacity of what has just happened. A man who was spanked on his first attempt to run for office eight years ago is president-elect today, after sweeping away the old guard of his own party. As James said earlier, it’s been awesome – and, for British politicos, humbling – to watch such energetic, raw, dramatic, democratic politics in action. For a bunch of reasons I may blog on later, we can only dream of it here in Britain.
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