Can Obama Unite the Country?

Rather early in the evening I was already hearing Barack Obama's surrogates talking about the need for the country to come together.

Now, they want to make nice?

It's hard to believe they're being sincere. Time will tell.

I can't picture Democrats being willing to make any concessions. The lib media are rejoicing in the MANDATE.

I fear "Coming together" means "Screw you, McCain supporters."

In his acceptance speech, Obama was addressing all Americans. He struck a conciliatory note.

Transcript

Question: Can Obama unite the country?

Answer: It's unlikely.

He has the opportunity. It's his choice. Obama will have to move dramatically to the center. It's really hard to imagine that happening.

Time will tell.

This country is deeply divided. Look at the popular vote. I can't see an extremist like Obama bridging the divide.

He's my president, but I don't think he wants to be.

Time will tell.
___________________

Read Thomas Friedman's reaction to the election of Barack Obama.

And so it came to pass that on Nov. 4, 2008, shortly after 10 p.m. Eastern time, the American Civil War ended, as a black man — Barack Hussein Obama — won enough electoral votes to become president of the United States.

A Civil War that in many ways was decided by the battle in Gettysburg, Pa., in 1863 concluded 145 years later via a ballot box in the very same state. For once Barack Obama carried the critical electoral battleground of Pennsylvania, his victory as the 44th president of the United States was all but assured.

In his famous Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln urged every American to take on “the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far nobly advanced.” That work remained unfinished, though, for a century and a half. For despite decades of civil rights legislation, judicial interventions and social activism — despite Brown v. Board of Education, Martin Luther King’s I-have-a-dream crusade and the 1964 Civil Rights Act — the Civil War could never truly be said to be over until America’s white majority actually elected an African-American as president.

That is what happened Tuesday night, and that is why we wake up to a different country. Yes, the struggle for equality is never done. But we can start afresh now from a whole new baseline. Let every child and every citizen and every new immigrant know that from this day forward: Everything really is possible in America.

How did Obama pull it off? To be sure, it probably took a once-in-a-century economic crisis to get enough white people to vote for a black man. And to be sure, Obama’s better organization, calm manner, mellifluous speaking style and unthreatening message of “change” all served him well.

...Obama will always be our first black president. But can he be one of our few great presidents? He is going to have his chance because our greatest presidents are those who assumed the office at some of our darkest hours and at the bottom of some of our deepest holes.

“Taking office at a time of crisis doesn’t guarantee greatness, but it can be an occasion for it,” argued the Harvard University political philosopher Michael Sandel. “That was certainly the case with Lincoln, F.D.R. and Truman.” Part of F.D.R.’s greatness, though, “was that he gradually wove a new governing political philosophy — the New Deal — out of the rubble and political disarray of the economic depression he inherited.” Obama will need to do the same, but these things take time.

“In this election, the American public rejected these narrow notions of the common good,” argued Sandel. “Most people now accept that unfettered markets don’t serve the public good. Markets generate abundance, but they can also breed excessive insecurity and risk. Even before the financial meltdown, we’ve seen a massive shift of risk from corporations to the individual. Obama will have to reinvent government as an instrument of the common good — to regulate markets, to protect citizens against the risks of unemployment and ill health, to invest in energy independence.”

But a new politics of the common good can’t be only about government and markets. “It must also be about a new patriotism — about what it means to be a citizen,” said Sandel. “This is the deepest chord Obama’s campaign evoked. The biggest applause line in his stump speech was the one that said every American will have a chance to go to college provided he or she performs a period of national service — in the military, in the Peace Corps or in the community. Obama’s campaign tapped a dormant civic idealism, a hunger among Americans to serve a cause greater than themselves, a yearning to be citizens again.”

None of this will be easy. But my gut tells me that of all the changes that will be ushered in by an Obama presidency, breaking with our racial past may turn out to be the least of them. There is just so much work to be done. The Civil War is over. Let reconstruction begin.

I don't mean to diminish the historical nature of Obama's election, but Friedman is being a bit excessive.

The Civil War just ended?

Come on.

"And so it came to pass"?

Gee, take it down a notch.

It's a bit early to be thinking of Obama as possibly one of our few great presidents.

Harvard University political philosopher Michael Sandel says Obama's election proves that the American public has rejected "narrow notions of the common good."

Sandel and Friedman are dreaming of a socialist America.

I wonder how long it will take for them to wake up. When will reality set in?