It's true that every election is significant. But it's also true that it's impossible to exaggerate the special significance of this one.
In so many ways, the election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States is nothing short of revolutionary. It represents a 180-degree change of direction for American policy and politics.
At least for the next eight years – do Republicans seriously believe they can dislodge Obama with Sarah Palin? – we won't have to fight the White House any longer. The White House will actually be fighting for us.
On the domestic front, we will soon have a president who believes in, and supports, all the issues we have worked so hard to achieve: civil rights; women's rights; gay rights; workers' rights; universal health care; protecting the environment; and making our schools, again, the best in the world. And, of course, we'll welcome a president who believes in protecting our basic freedoms and respecting the important limits on executive power enshrined in the Constitution. Not to mention the joy of having a president who doesn't mangle the English language.
On the global front, we will soon have a president who believes in, and supports, ending the war in Iraq, obeying international law, leading the fight against global warming, favoring diplomacy over bombs, and working with our allies as a partner rather than a schoolyard bully. And, most importantly, we will no longer feel embarrassed or ashamed of our president. Instead, we will take pride in a leader who is respected and admired around the world. Barack Obama's election was not only greeted by enthusiastic crowds in cities and towns across America, it was celebrated in Paris, Buenos Aires, Cape Town and Cairo.
Those policy differences are important. But what makes this election especially significant is the election of our first African-American president. It's official. Barack Obama will be our next president. It took 40 years, but the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. – that our children would someday be judged "not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character" – has finally become a reality.
This historic achievement is a particularly proud and emotional moment for African-Americans. One caller to my radio show told of her experience as a little girl, accompanying her grandfather to a polling place, only to see him turned away by men with shotguns because he was black. This year, she accompanied her son as he voted for the first time and helped make history by electing a black man as president.
But it's a proud moment for all the rest of us, too. Despite all the warnings about the so-called "Bradley Effect," we proved the pundits wrong – much to our own delight, and even surprise. For my part, I grew up in a segregated town in Delaware, where there were white stores and "colored" stores, white churches and "colored" churches, a white school and a "colored" school. The "N" word was everywhere, and white folks and black folks never mixed.
My parents were a rare exception. As owner and operator of a gas station, my father welcomed black customers, hired black employees and invited them to his annual Christmas reception in our home. Only one, Mr. Bootie Carter, dared accept the invitation. But even he insisted on arriving and leaving via the kitchen door. He didn't want to cause any trouble, he said, by walking in the front door of a white man's home.
Little did any of us dream that, half a century later, a black man would walk in the front door of the White House – a house built by slaves on land ceded by two slave states, Maryland and Virginia! – as the next president of the United States.
But that day of racial divide is gone forever. From now on, when people around the world hear us say that we believe all Americans are created equal, with equal rights and opportunities under the Constitution, they'll know we really mean it.
It's a new day and a new beginning. I've never been so proud to be an American.