YES WE CAN

YES WE CAN, YES WE CAN!

Tonight was a beautiful night.

I was informed by my 12-year-old that Obama had, indeed, won.
I witnessed a college campus full of 18-20-year olds celebrate Obama’s victory with shouts of joy while hanging from tree limbs.
I reveled in the unabashed joy, expressed by downtown Austin bar patrons’ support of our nation’s new leader.
I spoke with my 60-year-old parents who, each on their own accord, cast one vote for the Red party and one vote for the Blue party.
I pulled into my driveway, while gazing at my neighbor’s house, awash in the twinkling of strings of blue lights.

Tonight was a beautiful night.

Not because one side lost, and another side won. Not because of questions of gender or of race.

Tonight was a beautiful night because the people of our nation, the people who are the foundation of a democratic सोसाइटी, have chosen to take their future, their present into their own hands. To acknowledge the mistakes of our past, and , perhaps, to finally begin to learn from those lessons, so easily forgotten.

“To confirm the fundamental truth, that out of many, we are one.” said President elect Obama.

Even so, Obama does inherit a legacy of leadership ripe with internal and external problems. Most notably a nation in the grips of not one, but, perhaps two wars. A nation fearful of its basic economic stability, which is ready to topple due to the energy crisis, the housing crisis and, simply, fear of the future.

It won’t be easy. The answers will not jump out. There will much backlash. There will be more failures than triumphs.

But, we, as a nation, have made the choice for hope. For change.

YES WE CAN.