The Thoughts Keep Coming

• Thinking back to election night and McCain's concession speech: That was the John McCain we used to know before this election cycle! A careful and sympathetic concession speech, calling people to come together and a more than gracious call to the new President-elect. Perhaps the most patriotic thing McCain can do is be the bridge between Obama and the Republicans helping the nation heal from our Bush nightmare.


• I noticed that neither Sarah Palin nor Joe Biden were given the opportunity to speak. A good move on both parts. While talking about Palin, what kind of craziness for the McCain people to supposedly release negative info about Palin to Fox News, their chosen outlet. If the info is true, what a reflection on the McCain people that they even nominated her. If it is not true, what a reflection on the McCain people for being so petty. Either way, everyone loses.


• Roger Ebert had a remarkable reflection on election night where he commented that Obama won because he was the adult in the race, who stuck with his maturity and didn't become a name-caller or kid with a temper tantrum.

President Obama is not an obsessed or fearful man. He has no grandiose ideological schemes to lure us into disaster. He won because of a factor the pundits never mentioned. He was the grown-up. He has a rational mind, a steady hand, and a first-rate intelligence. But, oh, it will be hard for him. He inherits a wrong war, a disillusioned nation, and a crumbling economy. He may have to be a Depression president.

Ebert also reminded us that the 1968 image of police and demonstrators battling in Grant Park has now been replaced by a new one of white and black and Hispanic and Asian and Native American celebrating together.

• A good piece on Salon.com by Andrew O'Hehir about spending election night watching Fox. (Brave soul.) But embedded there is the remarkable commentary by Juan Williams, their centrist African-American who was not an Obama supporter. The whole piece is good and the embedded video is on the second page.

• And from Jessica at Indexed: