Thoughts on Barack

Alan Schroeder, professor of journalism, Northeastern University :
America occupies a unique psychological space internationally, particularly among foreigners who have traveled and lived here. As one of my European colleagues put it, the election of Barack Obama “shows again at the end of the day there is something fundamentally right in the U.S., something we’d been doubting for some time.”

Nations are not always granted the opportunity to rebrand themselves. Today, the USA stands proud, redeemed in the eyes of the world.









Diane Ravitch, education historian, NYU, Hoover Institution and Brookings Institution
I have been thinking about the improbability of the Obama victory. Not because of his race, about which enough has been said, but because of the scope of his accomplishment. This is a man who was virtually unknown until four years ago. This is a man with no powerful family connections, no deep regional base, no discernible organization other than the one he created. He managed somehow to create an effective political operation and raise hundreds of millions of dollars to advance his pursuit of the presidency. His is a very American story, in that he is virtually — perhaps entirely — self-made.

ERIC LIU, author and former Clinton White House adviser :

On one level, it doesn’t quite seem real. On another level, listening to him speak, it seems like Barack Obama has already been president for some time. We were ready for this. Now it’s up to us, and not just him, to make good on the promise of change.

Molly Moore, senior VP, Sanderson Strategies, former Washington Post correspondent

As I stepped out of my house to take my 8-year-old son to school on Election Day, I told him, “Benny, this is a new day in America.” He didn’t miss a beat and replied, “Yeah, smell that fresh Obama air!”