<P>I'd say ,ghd hair straighteners, wouldn't you? The winning candidate made an elevated speech that imbued the whole world with a touch of American patriotism. The loser spoke beautifully, with a pathos that had eluded him during the campaign,gucci. The popular vote was closer than some of the coverage suggests; but people on both sides have behaved with exemplary magnanimity.
It's worth repeating that American democracy is too easily taken for granted. Kenya's president,Mulberry handbags, Mwai Kibaki, has granted a national holiday in honour of Barack Obama's success – even though he blocked the election of Mr Obama's clansman, Raila Odinga, at the recent Kenyan elections. When a Luo can more easily become president of America than of Kenya, it tells you something about America.
Watching the coverage, I have been struck by the sense of national togetherness, even of catharsis. I'm reminded of the 1997 election here, when even those who had voted Tory got caught up in the mood. No doubt Barack Obama will disappoint his supporters, as Tony Blair did. No doubt anti-Americanism will, , reassert itself in time. But this doesn't alter the fact that most people, in the US and beyond,Nike Air Max 90 Australia, feel better about America this morning than they did 24 hours ago.
True, lots of people are by the messianic language used by Obama's supporters. I don't much care for it myself, even though I was one of the earliest ,Mulberry bags. But it's important to understand where it comes from. It has become a clich?? to talk of slavery as America's "original sin",ghd. What is sometimes missed on this side of the Atlantic is that, in a country which retains a strong sense of providence, people want to pursue that metaphor to its proper conclusion: redemption. And that is what,cheap ghd, for many Americans –,Mulberry handbags; even convinced McCain supporters,Air Max 90, –,ghd hair straighteners; the election result means. There is no office to which a black American cannot now reasonably aspire.
National narratives matter, perhaps more in the US than elsewhere. That country was founded on a set of principles: the rights of man, representative government, individual liberty. Barack Obama's election is a visible realisation of the universal applicability of those ideals. Now, perhaps more than ever before in peace-time, America feels like single country, united under one flag and under the finest constitution devised by human intelligence.
"For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill: the eyes of all people are upon us," preached John Winthrop on his way to the new land in 1630. "We must delight in each other; make others' conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body." Amen.
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