Hope is in the air

I’ve been around long enough to see some pretty spectacular things go across my television screen.

One of the first news items I saw when I was young was a film clip of oil tanks at Port Said ablaze during the Suez crisis. Then there was the big flap over the Russians being first in space with Sputnik in the late 1950s. And I got to stay home from school to watch the launching of American astronauts in the early days of manned space flights. My father was off Cape Canaveral when one of the first American astronauts went into space. I remember the summer of 1968 on my television screen: the Paris riots, the Chicago riots and the snuffing out of the Prague spring.

The political stuff is what I liked most. I can remember CBC coverage of the first days of JFK’s administration. Even as a kid, I knew things would not be humdrum, as they had been in the Dwight Eisenhower era. And, I remember the abrupt end of the Kennedy era.

The dawn of the Kennedy era now has a rival.

The November 4 election of Barak Obama was an event at least as palpable as Kennedy’s arrival on the presidential scene. It’s real. You can feel it.

It’s not just because of the president-elect’s ethnic background. Ironically, despite themselves, the Americans have come to a point where it’s almost irrelevant.

Almost.

And that’s good.

It’s because he is such a change. Even those of us who are more conservative can’t help feel a terrible weight has been lifted from our collective North American shoulders. Supposing Obama doesn’t do another spectacular thing for four or eight years, that’s enough.

The president-elect faces a plundered treasury, a looted economy and enough international enemies to staff a lifetime.

But he is young, like Kennedy was in 1960, and has that feeling, that inspiration that will go a long way in leading the pretty good team of people available to him. A team that will, no doubt, include Kennedys, with broad experience in politics and social issues.

And, I dare say, I’m sure fellow African-Americans of high accomplishment – Gen. Colin Powell, Dr. Bill Cosby, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Oprah, Dr. Condaleeza Rice and countless others – aren’t going to let him stumble under this unprecedented baggage he has inherited. Ethnicity could well be expected to count that far.

Thankfully.

Meanwhile, I’m a little perturbed there hasn’t been a Vietnam vet as president, and now there likely won’t be one. Those folks still need some validation, and one of their own as the commander-in-chief would have just about done it. John Kerry would have been a good one in 2004. Al Gore was a Vietnam vet vice-president, and not a bad one, either -- so that will have to do.