So, America has elected its next President, its next Vice President, 35 Senators, 435 members of the House of Representatives, and thousands of state and local officers. We did it, again, without violence or bloodshed, with a minimum of intimidation, with a minimum of fraud, and, in general, with great dignity. There can be no doubt that the People have spoken. There can be no doubt that skin color no longer determines who may or may not participate in in our common public life, or at what level. We elected a man for what he believes and what he says, not for what he looks like, and that is, indeed, a milestone. Congratulations to America for those accomplishments.
Now, it will be no surprise to anyone who reads my musings regularly (or has read the site description at the top of each page) that I wish the outcome had been a different one ideologically. I did not and do not care about the race or gender of any candidate for any office, but I care very much what he or she says and thinks. If the latter are our primary concerns, this election was a clear defeat for conservatives. As a conservative, I think that constitutes a loss for the nation. Of course, I don’t think the Republican Party ever had much chance of holding ground in this election. For that matter, classical conservatives (as opposed to neocons) had even less. We were hoping for a better result, not an excellent one. Alas, it was not to be.
CNN tells me the U.S. chooses “change.” It’s not clear to me, yet - or, indeed, probably to anyone - just what change America collectively thinks it will get, much less what it will actually get. That said, change is coming. Indeed, in troubled times of war, economic turmoil - the worst of which I sincerely doubt is over - political division, and a deep moral divide on countless issues, change is inevitable. There was never any question that the United States of America will be different in 2012 from what it is in 2008. The world changes fast enough on its own to guarantee that. The question is, given that we can collectively control some of that change, what do we do with that power, which we have now entrusted in President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama? We will start hearing and seeing the answer today, I suspect.
I have one final thought I want to share in this election wrap-up. One of the common responses to the election and re-election of President George W. Bush was to say, “Well, he’s not my President.” Indeed, already, some are responding that way to Obama; others are embracing him as “my” President (Senator McCain took the latter approach). Here is my thought on this topic: George Bush is not my President, nor will Senator Obama be. Nor was any of Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, or Jimmy Carter. I don’t have a President, and never will.
We, the People of the United States of America, we have a President, and we have elected a new one. This Nation must stand or fall as one. The trend of claiming and disowning particular officeholders based on their political affiliations is, I think, an extremely dangerous one. Our nation is defined in large part by a simple phrase: e pluribus unum, “out of many, one.” We had better take hold of that concept, before we produce many from the one People and one Nation we have inherited. And we had better all own this new President and claim him not as “mine” or “theirs,” but as “ours.” We need to hold him - and all who claimed victory last night - accountable to the People for what our government does in the next four years.
Members of the military have a time-honored saying: “We salute the rank, not the man.” Likewise, we - all of us - can and should honor the President and the presidency of this nation, regardless of upon whom that burden rests.
We have a President. We have a Nation. We are a People. Let us celebrate that, and let us see if we can unite in respecting those institutions and working in and through them for another four years, so that we still have them at that time.
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