Wishful thinking - Obama wins!

You read it here in April of last year under the headline, "Readers better get used to a black president." I was the first person to predict Barack Obama would win the election and if he does, I will naturally assume the title of "America’s Smartest Columnist."

Being so far ahead of the curve, I’ve had more time than most to consider what an Obama presidency would mean for America. I’ve concluded that a government led by President Obama means the country has a real chance to stop kicking the proverbial can down the street, waiting for the results of the next election cycle, and finally solve the problems we face.

It also means Washington gridlock due to partisan politics would end as Barack Obama’s election signifies the death of the Republican Party and the beginning of an American Renaissance.

For 28 years, the Republican Party (a loose coalition of people who believe in closed borders, criminalizing abortion, lower taxes, less government spending on people, and more government spending on the military) has come to dominate not just our government, but our whole political process. With the exception of the two years between 1992 and 1994, the Republicans controlled either the executive branch or the legislative branch — and between 2000 and 2006, they had both.

They brought us a wall on our southern border, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, tax cuts for rich people, doubled the national deficit, and $10 billion every month spent on the occupation of Iraq. To top off their unbroken streak of failures, we got the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression brought on by Republican deregulation schemes.

They were all but dead in 2006 because of their blind support for the Iraq occupation, and their current demise is being accelerated by the fact that they’re the party of division at a time when the country is desperate for national unity. That’s why so many Americans have rejected the Republican ideology (including many self-identified Republicans) that it is now a regional, rural, white party — which is another way of calling it "irrelevant." With the gifts they’ve given us over the last eight years, I have to say it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving group of people.

The list of Republicans crossing party lines to endorse Obama before the election will seem short compared to the list of Republicans who will confess to being "shocked" that they voted for a Democrat now that the election is over; and they’re a big part of the reason gridlock won’t be a problem for President Obama. Even those people who don’t agree with him won’t want to get on his bad side. Imagine being a member of Congress refusing to give your support to President Obama’s healthcare bill when the phone rings and it’s Joe Biden calling from the White House. Or, even worse, it’s Michelle Obama. Are you really going to withhold your vote and run the risk of ending up on Barack’s radar? Of course not. You’re going to go along to get along — if you know what’s good for you.

Our first President had no patience for partisan pettiness preventing political progress, and I doubt very highly that our next president will have any, either. Not when he has a Republican-started "war" in Iraq to end, a Republican-neglected war in Afghanistan to win, a Republican-sponsored deregulation-generated global economic crisis to help solve, and a Republican-coddled energy industry to modernize.

The same way George Washington’s election signaled the end of the American Revolution and the birth of a nation, Barack Obama’s election signals the end of the Reagan Revolution and the beginning of a period in our history I’m calling the American Renaissance and that I’m excited to be alive for.

The results are not in as we go to press, so there is a small chance John McCain won the election. If that’s the case, I’ll still be using this space to tell Republicans where to go and how to get there, but I’ll be submitting my work from Milan, not Santa Monica. I can deal with the whole original-sin-of-slavery, 3/5-of-a-person, institutionalized racism thing that comes with being black in America. But if this guy, who was the top of his class at Harvard Law School and whose mother was a white woman from Wichita, can’t get elected after what he’s done over the last two years, then the deal is off. If this country can’t accept Barack the president, then it can’t have Kenny the columnist, either. At least until 2012 when he runs again.