NIcholas Kristoph wrtites movingly of tyhe impact of this election:

"When my father was driven from his home in Eastern Europe in World War II, he initially settled in France. But France offered no opportunity to impoverished refugees, so my father sought better prospects for himself and his descendents by moving on to an Oregon logging camp to begin to learn English and start a new life. What lured him was not the real estate of America, but the idea of America.

We Americans have periodically betrayed that idea of equality and opportunity, but on Tuesday evening we powerfully revitalized it. I invited people to post their thoughts on Barack Obama's election on my blog, nytimes.com/ontheground, and the result was an outpouring from every nook of the globe.

Jessica watched the results from a bar in Cape Town and wrote: "For the first time in recent memory, I can shout in the streets that I am American and be proud of the progress, hope and color that now define us."

In Switzerland, an American was bathed in compliments comparing the election to the fall of the Berlin Wall. An American in Kenya named Tom wore an Obama T-shirt and found that his walk to work took more than an hour because so many people stopped to congratulate him and celebrate with him.

An awed Tanzanian named Leonard wrote to say that this election has promoted democracy far more effectively than anything the United States could say or do. He ended: "Long live America."

And here in the United States, an 8-year-old boy announced on Wednesday morning his new career goal: He will be America's first Latino president.

The outpouring suggests that the United States will enjoy an Obama dividend of global good will in the coming months, a chance to hammer out progress on common threats. "Barack" means blessing in Swahili, and this election feels like America's great chance to rejoin the world after eight years of self-exile.

Mr. Obama's election may also be a political milestone, ending an era in which Republicans succeeded at winning votes from the working poor to cut taxes for billionaires. That was the Republican Party's great success over the last 40 years. Blue-collar Americans regularly voted like stockbrokers because they felt more at home with Republican traditional values.

Mr. Obama chipped away at this values divide, and that's why the United States will have its first Democratic president since John Kennedy who isn't from the South. Mr. Obama just may be able to stitch together a Democratic majority for years to come.

Still, Mr. Obama will soon have to prove himself. Remember that when Gordon Brown became the British prime minister last year, he was beloved for his reserve and cool competence — a demeanor a bit like Mr. Obama's, though without the eloquence. Within a few months, voters were calling for Mr. Brown's head.

One of Mr. Obama's challenges will be to harness the extraordinary idealism that he inspired in his campaign to a larger, national cause. My 11-year-old daughter toiled with her friends this fall to sell lemonade and cookies to raise money for Mr. Obama's campaign, all on their own initiative. On Election Day, my daughter was still selling Obama buttons in the street, and on election night, she flagrantly defied her bedtime rules to celebrate as history unfolded. Now she's ready to drop out of school — who needs algebra? — and become a community organizer.

The obvious way to institutionalize that kind of excitement is a national service program, not only for young people but also for graying baby boomers considering "encore careers."

Whatever the next step, it's worth savoring this historic vista. First, look backward at a long-forgotten horror. In 1958, a little white girl in North Carolina innocently kissed a 9-year-old black friend named Hanover on the cheek. The police arrested the boy, along with his 7-year-old companion, and a court sentenced him to 12 years imprisonment for attempted rape. (After publicity, the boy was eventually released.)

Considering that past, perhaps the most incisive comment on Mr. Obama's election actually came long ago. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the Hawaii Legislature in 1959, two years before Mr. Obama was born in Honolulu, and declared that the civil rights movement aimed not just to free blacks but "to free the soul of America."

Mr. King ended his Hawaii speech by quoting a prayer from a preacher who had once been a slave, and it's an apt description of the idea of America today: "Lord, we ain't what we want to be; we ain't what we ought to be; we ain't what we gonna be, but, thank God, we ain't what we was."

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Yas, yas---thank Gawd we ain't what we was.

I am proud of this nation.


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