Turning on the BBC this morning after a very short sleep, John McCain's voice provided the good news (from The Telegraph):
I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him but offering our next president our goodwill and earnest effort to find ways to come together. Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans.
With that, the incredible journey of Barack Obama to the White House became fact. John McCain ended his campaign in a very honorable way; francophones would call it "très fair-play." Now the challenge will be to enlist him and his supporters in the monumental task of rebuilding America after the lost Bush years.
TV audiences saw the emotion on the faces of the hundreds of thousands of Americans gathering in Chicago, Washington, and in lots of small towns across the country. Joy, hope, pride, relief.
Last night a few thousand of us gathered in Brussels for an election-eve party - expat Americans, Belgians, but also people from every corner of the international diaspora present in Europe's capital. My job as the "Obama cheerleader" (debate would be too dignified a term for our performance in front of such a crowd) was made easier by the numbers; Obama's landslide in the US looked mild compared to the overwhelming support he had in the hotel ballroom last night.
The after-action interviews of us expat Americans will soon taper off, and the brainstorming now begins: later today I will attend one of what will be many sessions in European and other capitals on prospects for renewal of American ties with the world under an Obama Administration. My plan: go into Obama mode: listen to my European hosts - Green think tank The Heinrich Boll Foundation - and hear what they prescribe for bringing the United States into the fold of countries seeking solutions to the world's grave environmental problems of climate change and resource constriction.
Wonkiness will abound, and I will be as active a participant as my couple hours' sleep permits. But my heart will be in places like Chicago - or Nairobi, where Barack Obama's victory has been declared a national holiday. It's party time.
I don't care if some commentators want to downplay the Obama-JFK connection. For millions in the US and around the world, Barack Obama's election to the US Presidency surpasses the historical milestone of Irish Catholic Kennedy's election in 1960.
In my parents' native Ireland, for years thousands of homes sported photos of a sort of holy trinity: the Pope (whoever he was at the time), hero of Irish independence Michael Collins, and President John F. Kennedy. I expect that President Barack Obama's portrait will be ubiquitous - and not just in Kenya - in simple homes the world over for a long time to come.
And birth registries throughout the world: get ready for a deluge of little ones named Barack!
(photo: Bridges For Obama)