Election Follow Up.

Last night I watched the returns on the computer. BBC had a streaming broadcast and I sat through the whole thing watching as each set of states reported in. I felt blessed to live in a country where I could do that without having a TV or service to provide good viewing.

When the time came I watched McCain's concession speech. In it he proved himself a generous man and a good loser. I really liked it when he promised to work with Obama and Biden to help the country. I also liked the way he refused to let the crowd of disappointed supporters get angry and and ugly during his speech. That too is a sign of a sensible man with his heart in the right place, all campaign strategies aside. Then, because I was exhausted, I went to bed.

This morning, when I got up, I located a full version of Obama's acceptance speech. I sat there watching our President Elect talk about everybody under the sun. He didn't leave out a single soul in his acknowledgement of victory. He made everyone in the whole world a part of it. And he recognized each person's concerns as he talked about how we as a country, and a world, need to build things. When he started walking through the United States history and all our great events I started crying. When he started tying each generation and every person on the planet to our future I cried even harder. He tied all the hands in our country together and talked about the labor of building our future brick by brick. He didn't build us a pipe dream as he acknowledged the missteps and false starts that might happen and the fact that it would take more than a term to fix even the most crucial of our present problems.

What he sounded like to me was a "man of the people" and I hope that holds true. I'd like to see the resumption of fireside talks as we work to make things better for this country and the rest of the world. I also hope he will find ways to make himself more accessible to the American people. When the White House web page was first built it had a place where you could email the president and all the rest of his staff. Right now the only person you can email directly seems to be the vice president, although there is an interactive page where you can talk to the white house staff and that didn't include everybody. I guess if I want to say anything to Mr. Obama before he takes office I'll probably need to contact his campaign website.