The biggest day in global politics?
Well, does it feel like the world has changed this morning?
If Americans voted as the pollsters predicted, it certainly will
have done.
President Obama, the
Son of a Kenyan, born on an island in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean and partly-educated in the country with the largest Muslim
population in the world, is surely bound to shake things up
at home and abroad.
I'm not sure if it's despite or because of the two year
build-up, the billions that could have been better-spent, the
exploitation of religion and the jingoism, but the US election has
had me, like countless other British people, hooked for months.
And it's all made our own politicians and elections seem
insipid and predictable. Can you imagine a British candidate saying
this with any credibility?
"I'm here because somebody marched.
"I'm here because you all
sacrificed for me.
"I stand on the shoulders of
giants."
…you'd hear them guffawing in the
Hebrides.
As the most powerful person ever to have lived (or at least he will
be when inaugurated on 20th January 2009) the weight of
expectation will be immense.
But I for one am hopeful. Then again, I'm sure many feminists
felt the same way on
4th May 1979 …and it didn't quite work
out as that way for them.
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