(A reponse to
this thread by leftofthedial that turned into its own rebuttal post)
You don't think that, for the first time, an awful lot of people in this country who feel underrepresented by their own government would suddenly go "Wait a second. You mean all that stuff about my children being able to become president someday isn't just empty rhetoric anymore?"
Let's forget about policy for a second--policy is important, but it can and always will be altered to best serve a changing country's needs. Let's talk about something that can't easily so easily changed--perspective. America needs good PR--specifically, a change in national and international perception--VERY badly right now. We need to prove to the world that we're capable of exceeding expectations and electing a leader who represents what the US today, with its never-higher concentration of minorities and immigrant families, actually looks like, physically and spiritually. And we need to prove our ourselves that the unwritten rule is now mere fiction--that it truly DOESN'T matter who your parents are.
It's what the US, the country that gave us the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, should be--and it's exactly what we haven't been for the last 8 years. Everything about Bush/Cheney's reign of power, from Florida stolen in 2000, to Abu-Ghraib, to Gitmo, to Katrina, to the Immigration scare of recent times, says one thing to Americans and the world: you won't do well by this country if one of the few things in this world you're personally incapable of altering, your bloodline ancestry, is of the wrong mixture. Everyone KNOWS that a washout and addict like George W. Bush would never have amounted to anything had it not been for his wealthy, powerful, socially mobile family, and this realization has haunted us since 2000: some of us will forever be on the right track, and some of us will forever be on the wrong track. That's inarguably America at it's worst, and deep down, most Americans know it..
And yes, to me, the election of Barack Obama, son of a Nigerian and a Kansan, product of a single-parent household, ambitious student of multiple universities and disciplines, tireless worker for the community, and now pride of thousands (millions?) of people whose backgrounds are NOTHING like his, represents what the country can be capable of when it's at its finest. I'll support him until the end.