Obama

It's done. It's over. He won.  

A measure of the times: we have the election of the first black President and we still have to say "Now comes the hard part."

But can there be any doubt that Obama proved himself the best candidate? Clinton and McCain looked like children next to him, the former towing along the Clinton psychodrama and brittle lust for power, the latter exposed as devoid of what was supposed to be his greatest asset, namely, leadership qualities.

Obama: a President-Elect for grownups. Do you think we're up to it?

Obama the ruthless. . . and thank goodness.

From Frank Rich's column in today's New York Times:

"But certainly the single most revelatory moment of the campaign — about the political establishment, not Obama — arrived in June when he reversed his position on taking public financing. This was a huge flip-flop (if no bigger than McCain’s on the Bush tax cuts). But the reaction was priceless. Suddenly the political world discovered that far from being some exotic hothouse flower, Obama was a pol from Chicago. Up until then it rarely occurred to anyone that he had to be a ruthless competitor, not merely a sweet-talking orator, to reach the top of a political machine even rougher than the Clinton machine he had brought down." 

Thank goodness for a Democratic candidate willing to bare knuckle it when necessary.