Brains Are Back

I've been trying to figure out the best way to describe why I'm so thrilled with the outcome or the election. So many reasons besides just the fact that my side won. Instead of writing my own thoughts on the subject, I found someone who perfectly captured what I'm feeling.

Here's an edited version of a Newsweek article by Michael Hirsh

Brains Are Back

For two days now, Americans have celebrated the idea that we may have finally atoned for our nation's original sin, slavery, along with its long legacy of racism. We can rejoice in the world's accolades over the election of a multicultural African-American to the presidency after nearly eight years of cringing in shame as the Bush administration methodically curdled our Constitutional values and sullied our global reputation as a beacon of hope. Every once in a while, it seems, we Americans do manage to live up to our ideals rather than betray them. Hooray!

I am just as happy as everyone else over all this global good feeling. But there's something else that I'm even happier about—positively giddy, in fact. And the effects of this change are likely to last a lot longer than the brief honeymoon Barack Obama will enjoy as a symbol of realized ideals. What Obama's election means, above all, is that brains are back. Sense and pragmatism and the idea of considering-all-the-options are back. Studying one's enemies and thinking through strategic problems are back. Cultural understanding is back. Yahooism and jingoism and junk science about global warming and shabby legal reasoning about torture are out. The national culture of flag-pin shallowness that guided our foreign policy is gone with the wind.

I'm under no illusion that Barack Obama will turn out to be perfect. He'll probably screw up some things, especially at first. The problems he faces–from the economic crisis to Iran's nuclear program–are just too hard. But, after eight years of a president who could barely form a coherent sentence, much less a strategic thought, we can finally go back to respecting logic and reason and studiousness under a president who doesn't seem to care much about what is "left," "right" or ideologically pure.

Or what he thinks God is saying to him. A guy who keeps religion in its proper place—in the pew. The politics represented by George W. Bush—the politics of ideological rigidity, religious zealotry and anti-intellectualism—"has for the moment played itself out," says presidential historian Robert Dallek.

From the very start of his campaign, Obama has given notice that whatever you might think about his policies, they will be well thought out and soberly considered, and that as president he will not be a slave to passion or impulse.How very presidential. And how very unusual.

One tragedy of the Bush administration is the amount of American brainpower and talent that went unused, the options that went unconsidered, because they were seen to lack ideological purity. That era is over as we confront a desperate landscape—a serious recession and two prolonged wars.

"I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face," Obama said in his acceptance speech in Chicago Tuesday night. If he holds to that pledge and nothing else, we'll be OK.

So anything seems possible now, even when it comes to the toughest issues. Victors, it is said, write the history. Obama is now about to write America's new history. Unless I mistake my man, its theme will be that reason and sense and that cardinal American virtue—pragmatism—are going to rule once again.

And that's really something to celebrate.