U.S. voters sounded the likely death knell of President Bush?s ill-fated excursion into the quagmire of Iraq Tuesday while electing the nation?s first female president and first black vice-president in a presidential election many historians are calling the most significant since the 1860 contest that brought Abraham Lincoln to power and precipitated the Civil War.
The historic Democratic ticket of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois grabbed 279 electoral votes and 53 percent of the popular vote on their way to a sound defeat of the Republican pairing of Sen. John McCain and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. (Rodham was married to former U.S. president and “Dancing With the Stars” winner Bill Clinton from 1975 until late 2007, when the couple agreed to a no-fault divorce.)
Democrats nationwide rode the Rodham-Obama coattails to victory, expanding their legislative majorities to 47 seats in the House and 10 in the Senate.
“The people have spoken and their message is loud and clear: Bring America home from the failed war in Iraq and bring America back from a brand of conservatism that doesn?t care for Americans here at home,” said Rodham in a rousing speech to supporters at Madison Square Garden.
McCain won 259 electoral votes and 44 percent of the popular vote as the standard bearer for a divided party that has been in disarray since the 2006 midterm elections, in which opposition to the war in Iraq contributed to heavy Republican losses.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum?s upstart Conservative Party candidacy won 3 percent of the popular vote, mostly from ultra-conservative Christian voters angered by the vice-presidential nomination of Giuliani, who supports a woman?s constitutional right to choose an abortion.
Rodham said her first action as president will be to meet with Congressional leaders to determine the “safest, most honorable way” to redeploy American troops away from Iraq to other “strategic locations” that would ensure stability in the Middle East without provoking Tehran.
Throughout the campaign, Rodham has favored renewed diplomacy with Iran, which says it will conduct its first nuclear missile tests in January. She is also expected to push for renewed six-party talks with a nuclear North Korea.
Leaders from nations around the world, including ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro, are hailing Rodham?s election as a chance for the United States to repair the damage done to its image by her predecessor?s unilateral decision to invade Iraq in 2003 in search of weapons of mass destruction that never materialized.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued his assertions that he may take preemptive action against Iran to prevent it from gaining the capacity to strike the Jewish state with nuclear weapons.
Rodham called on members of Congress from her party and the embattled Republican minority to “come together toward a more progressive vision of our future in which the wealthiest among us contribute to a society, where no child is denied a college education and where no working family is denied the basic right to quality health care.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she expects to have Rodham?s support for a measure that would make permanent the temporary top-bracket income tax increases and capital gains surcharges agreed to by a weakened President Bush earlier this year.
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is expected to appoint Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. to the Senate seat vacated by Obama, ensuring that the Senate will have one African American.
Former President Bill Clinton last week announced plans to marry his fiancée, Academy Award-winning actress Lindsay Lohan, in a Kabbalah wedding ceremony planned for New Year?s Eve on the Spanish island of Ibiza.
Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden could not be reached for comment.
AaronKeith Harris writes about politics, the media, pop culture and music and is a regular contributor to National Review Online and Bluegrass Unlimited. He can be reached at [email protected].
