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THIS LAND WAS MADE FOR YOU AND ME
By Roger Ebert on November 4, 2008 8:47 PM
As the mighty tide swept the land on Tuesday night, I was transfixed.
As the pundits pondered red states and blue states, projections and
exit polls, I was swept with emotion. Not because America was
"electing its first Black president." That comes a little late in the
day. It was because America was electing the right President.
Our long national nightmare is ending. America will not soon again
start a war based on lies and propaganda. We will not torture. We
will restore the rights of freedom of speech, freedom of privacy, and
habeas corpus. We will enter at last in the struggle against
environmental disaster. Our ideas will once again be more powerful
than our weapons. During the last eight years, the beacon on the hill
flickered out. Now the torch will shine again.
We will bring our troops home, in the right way. Am I against the
war? Of course. Do I support our troops? Of course. They were sent to
endanger their lives by zealots with occult objectives. More than
4,000 of them have died. Even more lives have been lost by our
coalition forces than by our own.
Do I blame George Bush? At the end of the day, I don't know that I
really do. I agree with Oliver Stone that Bush never knew he had been
misled until it was too late. I blame those who used him as their
puppet. The unsmiling men standing in the shadows. On Tuesday the
righteous people of America stood up and hammered them down.
Lots of people stayed up late Tuesday night. They listened McCain's
gracious, eloquent concession speech. He was a good man at heart,
caught up in a perfect storm of history. He had the wrong policies
and the wrong campaign. At the end, let me tell you about a hunch I
have. In the privacy of the voting booth, I think there is a
possibility that Condolezza Rice voted for Obama. Her vote might have
had little to do with ideology. She could not stomach the thought of
Vice President Palin.
I stayed up late. As I watched, I remembered. In 1968 I was in the
streets as a reporter, when the Battle of Grant Park ended eight
years of Democratic presidents and opened an era when the Republicans
would control the White House for 28 of the next 40 years. "The whole
world is watching!" the demonstrators cried, as the image of Chicago
was tarnished around the world. On Tuesday night, the world again had
its eyes on Grant Park. I saw tens and tens of thousands of citizens
with their hearts full, smiling through their tears. As at all of
Obama's rallies, our races stood proudly side by side, as it should
be. We are finally, finally, beginning to close that terrible chapter
of American history
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.
What gives me hope is that a great idealistic movement rose up to
support him. Some say a million and a half volunteers. Millions more
donated to his campaign. He won votes that crossed the lines of
gender, age, race, ethnicity, geography and political party. He was
the right man at a dangerous time. If ever a president was elected by
we the people, he is that president.
America was a different place when I grew up under Truman, Eisenhower
and, yes, even Nixon. On Tuesday that America remembered itself, and
stood up to be counted.
This land is your land,
This land is our land,
From California, to the New York island.
From the redwood forests, to the Gulf Stream waters--
This land was made for you and me.
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