This post originally appeared in the Kenosha News as part of the column series, My Turn with Basil Willis – November 15, 2008

I wasn’t going to do it. We’ve been dealing with presidential politics for almost two years and we’re all fatigued from it. The election coverage has been so exhaustive and absolute that it began to feed on itself; analysis of the analysis, climaxing with CNN beaming in correspondents. I even wrote about my disgust with the whole process in August. Forgive me, I really wasn’t going to, but as worn out as we are from all this, right now there is little else I care about.

I am not ashamed to admit I have wept three times as an adult; when my dad died, the Monday night after Brett Favre’s dad died and he played in Oakland, and last Tuesday night, when Barak Obama walked to the lectern as president-elect and the world cheered. I’m not talking about welling up like I’ve done during Terms of Endearment or Extreme Makeover Home Edition, I’m talking about big crocodile tears streaming down my stupid, smiling face.

It occurred to me then that this election is more than a campaign, it is a movement. It is more than Barack Obama, it is a people taking its government back after having been led astray. It is more than a black man rising to the highest office, it is the notion of being able to do anything we set our mind to. It is at the very minimum a feeling that we have hope again, that our country and world will be a better place. That’s all we really need as Americans, a little hope. Our will, imagination and hard work will take care of the rest.

Looking at the web sites of newspapers in major cities around the world, it appears we are not alone. Let’s be clear, the election of a US president is a world event, and the world rejoiced as most Americans did. To the rest of the world we represent an ideal as much as a place, and over the last eight years that ideal had lost much of its luster. The people who argue that we should not care what the world thinks are part of problem, and their party has been swept from power.

Part of the beauty of the dawning of a new era in American government is the decline of the Rove-Gingrich conservative movement of hate and fear. It’s like watching the Wicked Witch melt at the end of the Wizard of Oz. The American people have gotten wise to intolerance disguised as “family values.” As a group we were turned off by the negative Republican campaign. Fiscal Reaganites, the backbone of the party for almost 30 years, had formed a coalition with born-again Christians and somehow lost their way. Emboldened by their power, the far right social conservatives became rabid and by doing so have created fissures in the base.

I think it is too early to say the Republican party is done, but they have soul searching to do and need to decide whether to lean center or stay right. John McCain is not a bad guy but got sucked into the ugly conservative vortex and was not true to his independent centrism. Sarah Palin is just plain scary, and if she represents the best and brightest of the GOP, we won’t be seeing Republicans in power for a long time. I personally know dozens of women, regular women, who are infinitely smarter and would do a better job as vice president. I live with one of them.

My personal joy of the thorough butt-woopin’ Obama put on McCain and the pit bull, and everything it represents, has been replaced by exhaustion and the cold reality that things are going to get much worse before they get better.

What a mess we’ve created –  the invasion and occupation of Iraq under false pretenses, the horribly invasive Patriot Act, Katrina, Halliburton, the blurring of executive and legislative branches, waterboarding, nuclear proliferation, ten trillion dollars in debt– the list goes on and on. And now we are teetering on the brink of complete economic meltdown. After eight years the Bush administration is leaving behind a steaming pile of dung. But at least it is leaving. It appears now that we have the motivation, and a big enough shovel, to start cleaning it up. History tells us that if we work together will be successful doing so.

Yes, we can.