Current mood:

optimistic

One of those moments
Last night I got home about 10:30 and immediately started hopping around between CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC to see where the electoral count was. I'd been following it online at work and knew it was only a matter of time. I remembered what it felt like in 1992 when Dan Quayle made the first on-camera GOP concession and I jubilantly hurled insults at the TV. I wanted to feel that again.

I’d settled momentarily on NBC, not normally my first choice, a little before 11 when Brian Wiliams advised viewers that they ought to make sure they were watching at the top of the hour. This was the moment a lot of us had waited eight long, dispiriting years for.

And as 11 o’clock arrived, rather than give the electoral count, NBC simply let lengthy shots of the jubilant crowd in Chicago tell the story: Barack Obama was the president-elect. Then they brought on a battered veteran of the civil rights wars, John Lewis, my congressman.

And instead of the kind of in-your-face Democratic jubilation of 16 years ago, I felt a mixture of pride and amazement that a moment that once had seemed unthinkable had arrived. This was a moment that transcended party politics and disagreements over policy. A historic night.

This morning, I logged on and opened an e-mail from my son, a grad student at the University of Georgia, where football victories long have been marked by students ringing the chapel bell.

Said young Bill: “As I got out of the car last night in my driveway, I could hear the chapel bell ringing.”

I like that image.

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