Posted Wednesday, Nov. 5 at 11:37 PM CST; Thursday, Nov. 6 at 12:37 AM EST, 0537 GMT/UTC.
As one might expect, three names dominate this morning, in the tabloids as well as the quality papers: Obama, Obama, and Obama. The coverage borders on becoming so over-the-top that one might be given to wonder how the Chicagoan will ever be able to meet expectations. The Times, the Guardian, and the tabloid Mirror all publish special supplements; the Independent and the tabloid Daily Mail designate this morning’s issues as “souvenir editions.”
In the Independent’s lead story, Rupert Cornwell conjectures that the most remarkable thing about the President-elect is “simply that he knows what he’s about…. there in the midst of the frenzy, at this moment of supreme accomplishment, stood Mr Obama – cool, collected and already focused not on the historic victory he had just won in defeating the Republican John McCain and becoming America’s first black president, but on the monumental problems he will confront, and that will not await his inauguration on 20 January 2009.” In the Times, Tom Baldwin reports that Rahm Emanuel has been offered the position of chief of staff, and John Podesta will head up the transition. “A series of rapid-fire announcements of Mr Obama’s economic and national security teams are expected over the coming days. He has recognised that with economic crisis at home and unfinished wars abroad he must ‘hit the ground running’,” reports Baldwin. According to Ewen MacAskill and Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian, “Barack Obama will pay homage to Abraham Lincoln when he takes the oath of office as America’s next president in January, urging his fellow citizens to unite in ‘a new birth of freedom’.” They cite the congratulatory statement offered by outgoing President George W. Bush from the White House rose garden: “No matter how they cast their ballots, all Americans can be proud of the history that was made yesterday…. This moment is especially uplifting for a generation of Americans who witnessed the struggle for civil rights with their own eyes – and four decades later see their dream fulfilled.”
Commentary and analysis abound. The front page of the Telegraph features a commentary by Anne Applebaum, who emphasizes that the new administration’s options will be extremely limited: “I have absolutely no doubt that President McCain would have made many of the same decisions about many of these issues as will President Obama.” Nevertheless, the election represented a sort of catharsis for many Americans, including no small number of Republicans who crossed party lines, rendering the ultimate outcome inevitable. “Here is something that may be hard for foreigners to understand: Americans desperately want to believe that their country stands for fairness, for equality, for democracy. They especially want to believe this at times like the present, when there is a good deal of evidence to the contrary. After the disasters and embarrassments of the past few years … a vote for Obama allowed Americans to believe, once again, that the United States is still a virtuous nation.” In the Guardian, novelist Gary Younge reported from Chicago on the victory celebrations: “At the President’s Lounge, a bar in Chicago’s black southside, the soundtrack to that moment gave voice to decades of thwarted dreams. First they crooned soulfully to Sam Cooke’s Change is Gonna Come. Then they bellowed boisterously to McFadden and Whitehead’s Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now: ‘If you’ve ever been held down before, I know that you refuse to be held down any more.’” Martin Kettle, writing in the same paper, is circumspect: “This election was the Democrats’ to lose…. For Obama to have lost the election … would have constituted the biggest electoral missed opportunity in generations. It might have persuaded an entire generation that there was absolutely no validity whatever in electoral politics. Millions might have concluded that the only way to get the Republicans out of the White House was by some form of armed insurrection.” Still, Kettle concedes that the Obama victory was the most decisive one for a Democrat since Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964: “He has captured the White House by winning both the majority of the popular vote and by winning an overwhelming victory in the electoral college…. He has given the Democratic party both the political legitimacy of an unchallengeable victory and the moral authority, too.” In the Financial Times, Edward Luce and Demetri Sevastopulo argue that Obama brings qualities to the presidential office that more than compensate for his inexperience, citing the assessment of former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski: “Obama made the best first impression on me of anyone since John F. Kennedy…. [he is] better equipped in temperament and intellect for the highest office than anyone I can think of in recent memory.”
Also in the FT, Andrew Ward reports from Phoenix on the Republican postmortem. “Republicans began a painful inquest into their sweeping election defeat on Wednesday as the party prepared for life without control of any arm of federal government for the first time in 14 years.” Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who endorsed Obama, told CNN: “I think this is the time for deep introspection on the part of the Republican party.” Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) remarked: “Now is a time for Republicans to say: ‘Where should we be going?’ I think this is a time for us to look to ourselves and pull ourselves up by the boot straps and become the party of ideas again.” Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) chimed in: “We have got to clean up, reform and rebuild the Republican party before we can ask Americans to trust us again. This must begin with either a change of command at the highest levels or our current leaders must embrace a bold new direction. Our party must start today to admit our mistakes, fight for our convictions and encourage new conservatives to run for office.” The same paper invites a commentary from Democratic strategist James Carville, who is only too happy to dance on the Republicans’ grave: “What was once a split demographic has become a solid voting bloc for the Democratic party for many years to come. Mr Obama and congressional Democrats made history on Tuesday night in no small measure due to the unprecedented enthusiasm of America’s youth…. Quite simply, young voters (18-29 years old) delivered and delivered big.”
Everyone agrees that the new administration will face daunting economic challenges. In the Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard anticipates that Obama will nominate Tim Geithner of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to be Treasury Secretary. “Whoever is chosen, we are about to see a strategic shift in US economic policy. Mr Obama’s first stimulus package of $200bn will not be used to prop up middle-class spending. It will go on roads, bridges, ports, and the like, the start of a public works blitz to employ people and build things…. The president-elect is not a hard-core protectionist, although he tilted that way to survive the Democratic primaries against Hillary Clinton. He is a disciple of Professor Jagdish Baghwati, who thinks the Smoot-Hawley tariff act of 1930 caused the Wall Street crash to metastasize into a global slump.” Back in the FT, Krishna Guha cites the views of economist Alan Blinder: “We are now seeing all the classic signs of a rip-roaring recession, not just a little one.” Former Bush administration official Tim Adams quipped: “Barack Obama probably woke up the day after the election wondering what the heck he has got himself into.” Guha observes: “Beyond the formidable immediate pressures lie big long-term challenges in entitlement spending, healthcare, energy and education.” According to Richard Berner of Morgan Stanley, “The long-term challenges have got to be on the agenda as well. The longer the government waits to deal with them the more daunting they become.”