The land of promise, always looking forward

How did that happen? How in the world did America just become the first Western power to elect a black man as president?

Because the thing about America is — for better or worse — we don't look back.

A ranch hand named Mike Cagwin said that to me recently. I met him as he was ferrying cattle across the Columbia River. He was remarking how nobody he knew seemed to care if Barack Obama had known a Vietnam-era radical named William Ayers.

It's all old '60s crap, said Cagwin, 60, a former mill worker. People are done with all that — the Vietnam culture wars, the racial stuff. They want to hear about the future.

"We're not much for looking backwards in this country," he said.

No, we aren't. It can be one of our biggest flaws — that we have such a flimsy hold on our own history. We only look ahead. It makes us the country of Las Vegas, where if a building gets a bit worn, you just blow it up.

But it also makes us the kind of restless, searching, glorious place that votes the way you just did on Tuesday.

A place that takes chances. Experiments. That knows it has gone off track and needs, fundamentally, to change.

John McCain had no chance with that kind of pioneering spirit in the air. As much as he struggled to present himself as a maverick, he was the past. His whole campaign reeked of mustiness (newcomer Sarah Palin notwithstanding).

His Republican Party needed to be detonated like a faded Vegas hotel (don't worry, it will all be rebuilt in time).

Whereas Obama — he is our first truly 21st-century politician. With his mixed race, he looks like modern America. With his youth, he speaks to the generations taking over, not to baby boomers starting to retire.

His election won't be the end of racism or the culture wars or any of the other old grudges and grievances that have crippled American society. But that was one potent symbolic shift. As Obama said last night, who can now claim that America isn't still the land of promise? Where anything is possible? For anyone?

In Denver, at the Democratic convention, black street vendors sold a T-shirt that showed a picture of Martin Luther King Jr., titled "The Dreamer." Next to it was a picture of Obama, labeled "The Dream."

That's what happened yesterday in America. King's dream came true. Finally, suddenly, publicly, the nation collectively judged a man not for the color of his skin but the content of his character.

What an incredible election. What a great country.

Of course today all this is old news. Already the past.

Obama seemed to recognize that last night — that America's transformational election instantly became so much accepted wisdom. It's already time to move on. Get back to work. Start in on the long slog of making change, which is far tougher than talking about it.

"Even as we celebrate tonight," Obama said, "we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century."

In other words, don't look back. Not even to yesterday.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.