Considering Barack Obama

Superlatives are being slung around like so much horseshit and rightfully so.

There isn’t much more snow that can be rolled into the gathering, thundering ball of commentary surrounding Barack Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses last night.

the highway scribe has been on extended hiatus broken only by the requests of a select few that he weigh-in on this rather significant event in American politics.

So here goes...

We noted in “Considering John Edwards” that the former senator from North Carolina stood a good chance of becoming the Democratic Party’s nominee, because it was unlikely a woman could be elected president and less likely still that a black guy had a chance.

Black folks themselves have been holding back support for Obama, leery of having their heart’s broken (again). But this article in the “New York Times” suggests they had the same low opinion of the American people as the highway scribe did.

That’s what seven years of Geo. w. Bsh can do to your perspective.

But life can be kind and America, thank heavens, can still refresh and surprise us.

When he signed the Civil Rights Act over 40 years ago, Lyndon Baines Johnson said he was handing the country over to the Republican Party for a generation.

And what a miserable generation it has been, stripping us of all cooperation and mutual protection, dissolving like acid all that was noble, theoretical, and forward-thinking in our way of governance.

But it ended last night in a state where there are barely enough African-Americans to field a decent college basketball team; in a state that is 98 percent white.

It’s a little dangerous to overstate what happened, and more so to pinpoint it, but certainly worthy of an estimation. highwayscribery’s is that what Johnson launched has borne fruit; that in spite of our obvious and undeniable differences, black and white Americans have learned to live with one another, work with one another, and even marry one another.

Obama’s mixed pedigree is merely a symptom of these trends and it was only a matter of time (apparently) before being white and voting for a black followed suit.

And the suit it followed last night was Obama.

The social cataclysm aside, the Illinois senator stands on his own as a unique political animal of extraordinary intelligence and talent and we here endorse his campaign, his efforts, and his dreams.

Thanks Lyndon.