Awards! Huh! What are they good for? Absolutely nothing. Part IV

The “I Was There” Award (AKA The “Forgive Me While I Go A Bit Overboard” Award)

Except of course, I wasn’t. Not Grant Park, Chicago nor Harlem, New York nor Washington, D.C. but Brighton, East Sussex, on TV at 4am. Nonetheless the emotional impact of this moment was not hindered by geography. I consider myself, and I think others would concur, to be a dyed-in-the-wool cynic, yet I still find myself referring to Barack Obama as ‘ma boy’. Here is a politician gifted with the ability to connect with the individual unlike any since Kennedy, if even Kennedy is comparable.

The manner in which he stepped toward the dais will live with me forever. His face read not power and glory but humility, exhaustion, relief and no small measure of fear. It was as clear then as it was throughout his campaign that he is not a man driven and consumed by ego as Bush, Reagan, LBJ and even Clinton, were.

His victory speech, equally, was far from victorious in its tone; ”change”, the campaign slogan, has not arrived but the opportunity for it has.