History made

It’s a new dawn. It’s a new day. That’s the facts of every day, but now it is special on every day. Barack Obama has won the presidency of the USA. It’s just like Hollywood, though not in the way that John McCain slighted his opponent for, that is, being lightweight. No, rather it is like all those high-minded films that portray a black man as president. It is a dream become reality. There is not much more to say. As Obama and his wife Michelle joked with Joe Klein, the political journalist and author of Primary Colors, the book that satirised the Clintons’ rise, “what are you going to write about us? We’re so boring.” They certainly do have a normal life, kids going to school, Barack going to the gym, shooting a few hoops, so forth. Obama has stayed relentlessly on-message so as not to frighten the herds.
The same cannot be said of Sarah Palin. Though Joe Biden (the third Democratic party Veep candidate in a row to have a first name starting with ‘Jo’) made a few blunders, it was Palin who allegedly ‘went rogue’, talking about what she wanted to say, rather than what her McCain handlers wanted her to. Accordingly, as they might have done with Iran, the McCain team took out pre-emptive strikes on the rogue VP nominee, before the election had even happened.
And now that is has, the behind the scenes briefings are becoming ever more ferocious, claiming that Palin, dishonouring her fellow Palin, Michael, did not know Africa was a continent, instead believing it a country in itself. For a hick, you can see the reasoning - you have Italian-Americans, you have Mexican-Americans and you have African-Americans; although saying this, she couldn’t identify the three countries in the North American Free Trade Association, NAFTA, which has a pretty big clue in it’s title, namely Mexico, USA and Canada - similar to a reality TV contestant in this country being unable to name the three constituent parts of Great Britain. Amusingly, one Daily Telegraph reader, incensed about bringing up the Africa topic, posted a comment after the online article, saying that his wife “did not know Africa was a continent - and she is a teacher.” I love the presumption that somehow that makes it okay. No wonder school standards are falling (allegedly). She should be removed from her profession forthwith (or at least attend a re-training course). Further, being a Telegraph reader, the man probably would have supported the British Empire had he lived fifty years ago. Well, you don’t build an empire if you don’t know where to go.
In the end, Palin cost McCain votes - a complete turnaround from the Republican party convention when, fleetingly, she seemed poised to win the presidency for McCain on account of her scripted lines, her sassy attitude and that she was a woman. It was downhill ever after, as one bad story after another dogged the campaign. The most damaging narrative was that she was an uptight know-nothing, yet one heartbeat of a 72-year old recovering from skin cancer, who had a one in four chance of dying in a first term, away from assuming the mantle of leader of the most powerful country on earth. Many high-ranking Republicans defected, calling it irresponsible. Mike Huckabee would have been a far better choice to energise the grass roots, while McCain reached out to the independents. He would have handled himself far better in interviews where he didn’t know the questions first. But Huckabee had embarrassed McCain by being the last to drop out of the primary and winning states even when it became a two-horse race. McCain’s adviser, Steve Schimdt, the guy behind his boss making personal attacks on Obama, chose Palin, someone who wouldn’t be a threat. Yet the idea of her having a 25% chance of becoming the 45th president, with all of her limitations (being female doesn’t come into it), was thankfully seen by enough of the US electorate to be absurd.
I watched the BBC coverage of the events on the election live, from midnight to 5.30 am, having grabbed a few hours earlier in the evening. The corporation’s treatment wasn’t the most slick and they repeatedly encountered technical problems, which considering they’ve had four years to plan this, doesn’t strike one as professional. They had even got rid of the swing-o-meter, going for purely functional facts and figures, with Jeremy Vine strutting around a CGI gantry like a Bond villain planning his next move. Therefore it was dry, but not like gin.
All the same, I didn’t fell compelled to change to another channel - maybe because I trust the BBC to perform better than the others, maybe because it was such an early hour and I couldn’t be bothered to have the news coming at me from a different angle. There was still a sense of euphoria roused from within me as Obama exceeded the critical 270 electoral college vote mark. The electoral college is fifty years out of date, if not more - in a two-party state, proportional representation makes much more sense, especially in the run for the presidency - but the Democrats certainly played the existing system well here, completely trouncing McCain in this format with twice as many collegians for Obama as McCain. The best part of the election night - after actual confirmation of Obama’s victory - was a completely doo-lally Gore Vidal sounding-off in such a rambling way as to engulf us in a verbal thicket. He was as laughable as one of his more risible screenplays. It would be kind to say that he had indulged in a bit too much to drink. He crocheted about a possible eruption against Obama from political opponents, he ranted about how the Republican party wasn’t a party at all, but a mindset, he regaled us with his upbringing in a political family to no real gain to the audience, all while avoiding eye contact with the camera, like someone who doesn’t quite know what’s going on, but knows they don’t want that. When Jonathan Dimbleby tried to extract responses from Vidal, he retorted that he didn’t know who Dimbleby was or why he was on the TV at all, since “you tend to get on there people who don’t know anything” (he had a point on that). I knew it would be a YouTube hit and that has materialised, but I’m glad to have seen it live first-off.