Now, unity

The people of the United States now have opened the door for Barack Obama to step into the ages. The young senator from Illinois, tested by a campaign of nearly two years, shaped through a sturdy upbringing by a grandmother in Hawaii who died just two days before his election to the presidency, bestowed with a keen intellect and a remarkable gift for communication, will in January take the oath of office to lead this nation in troubled times.

He will then become the first person of color to be president. History was made yesterday, 143 years after the end of the Civil War, but still a time in which many Americans can recall racial discrimination both subtle and overbearing. We are not that far removed from the decades when black Americans, entitled to all the rights enjoyed by others, were denied them. And we are in a time when racial issues still can divide us, a reality that the president-elect confronted in his own campaign.

But now, Obama is no longer a candidate. He will be president. Now he must campaign again, not for victory, but for unity.

Politics divides people. If ever there were a time, however, when both the new president and the people need to gather their collective resolve, it is now. Obama can be helped in that effort by his opponent, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a former Vietnam prisoner of war who has fought in his country's uniform and understands the need for courage and the sharing of burdens in governing.

In yards where there are foreclosure signs, it matters not which candidates' signs were up last week. In the hospital emergency rooms, or in crowded public clinics, or in the homes where notices of health insurance cancellations have arrived, there are no partisan shouting matches. In a mother's living room, where a son's picture in uniform proudly sits in the center of a table, the question is not now, "Are you a Democrat or a Republican?" but "When is my boy coming home?"

Obama and his vice president-elect, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, must now confront all of these things, and many more. They will arrive at their posts in a time when the nation faces a multitude of problems at home and overseas, following a president who has struggled and sometimes failed to cope. Obama and Biden have been elected on a promise of change. They must govern with a sense of mission and urgency.

Each time America elects a president, it is more than a political victory. It is a monument to the strength and stability of what our Founding Fathers began 232 years ago with a declaration of freedom from British rule. It is a testament to the endurance of our democracy, threatened by a Civil War that tore the nation in two, buffeted by two World Wars that challenged freedom itself, rocked by a Great Depression.

Yes, every citizen who voted early or marked a ballot in the frenzy of Election Day affirmed our fundamental principles of government, and the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, John Adams and all of those who gave birth to a new nation. No matter who wins, no matter how divided the nation is, no matter what crises confront us, those names and the names of their successors echo in every polling place in every election, from the crowded streets of Manhattan to the quiet hollows of Kentucky. It is the sound of freedom ringing.