Only in America

Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Op-Ed by Chanda Chhay

“The Land of Opportunity.” This phrase is synonymous with the United States of America. It conjures up an image of happiness and instills hope in the human spirits. When I was living in a refugee camp in Thailand in the 1980s, most of us refugees, regardless whether we had any knowledge of what America looked like, unanimously gave only one answer to the question: “Where would you want to be resettled?” “I want to go to America” was our answers then. Surprisingly, it appears that not only desperate refugees in need of new places to rebuild their shattered lives wanted to go to America, many other people, too, wanted to go to America. I must embarrassingly admit that I had not a clue what America was like or how I would be treated as a stranger coming from the other corner of the globe when I proclaimed that I wanted to go to America. But, my anxiety was put to rest the minute I set foot in America, for it was perfectly clear to me that America was and is the land of opportunity and redemption for the oppressed and desperate people yearning to breathe free from their misfortunes of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Another phrase which was popularized after the ascendancy of the 16th US President, Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865), is that “Life could rise from a log cabin to the White House.” As a boy, Lincoln grew up in a log cabin, used a block of wood as blackboard, charcoal as chalk, and an axe as eraser to teach himself arithmetic and literature. Undoubtedly, it is this humble history of people like Abraham Lincoln that inspired Mr. Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, to pursue what appears to be an impossible dream.

Mr. Barack Obama was born in 1961 in the state of Hawaii. His parents were of different races. His father was a black African student from Kenya. His mother was a white woman from the state of Kansas. The couple met during their study at the East-West Center in the University of Hawaii. When Obama was 2 years old, his parents divorced, and, by the time he was 6, his mother remarried another fellow student from Indonesia. The new couple, along with young Obama, soon moved to live in Indonesia in 1967. Thus, Obama began his schooling in Indonesia, which was conducted in the Indonesian language. His mother tongue, English, had not been formally taught to him until he was 10 years old when he moved back to live with his grand parents and attended school in Hawaii.

From the very beginning, Mr. Obama’s life situation could probably be described as “disadvantageous”. But, thanks in part to the land of opportunity, to which he was connected, and the audacity of his will, Mr. Obama was able to overcome myriads of obstacles and challenges in his life to become the 44th President of the United States of America within a span of only 12 years, starting from the time when he entered politics and became an Illinois State senator in 1996.

As America prepares to present her 44th President to the rest of the world, the image of a black leader standing amid a predominantly white crowd of politicians and well wishers will once again reaffirm what it means to be a land of opportunity. There is no doubt about it; that only in America that we, the people, regardless of our social classes, could rise from the dustbin of societal garbage to become a leader of one of the greatest country on earth. As a US citizen and a former destitute refugee, I realize how fortunate I am to be able to come and live in this land of opportunity where human capability reigns supreme.

Chanda Chhay

NBC: OBAMA ELECTED 44TH PRESIDENT

Illinois senator to become first African-American executive in U.S. history

BREAKING NEWS

By Alex Johnson
Reporter
msnbc.com

Barack Obama, a 47-year-old first-term senator from Illinois, shattered more than 200 years of history Tuesday night by winning election as the first African-American president in the history of the United States, according to projections by NBC News.

Obama reached the 270 electoral votes he needed for election at 11 p.m. ET, when NBC News projected that he would win California, Washington and Oregon.

Campaigning as a technocratic agent of change in Washington, not as a pathbreaking civil rights figure, Obama swept to victory over Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, whose running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, was seeking to become the nation’s first female vice president.

A crowd nearing 100,000 people gathered in Grant Park in Chicago, awaiting an address by Obama. Hundreds of thousands more — Mayor Richard Daley said he would not be surprised if a million Chicagoans jammed the streets — were watching on a large television screen outside the park.

Surveys of voters as they left polling places nationwide indicated the breadth of the victory by Obama, the son of a Kenyan father and a white American mother. As expected, he won overwhelmingly among African-American voters, but he also won a slim majority of white voters. He won among women and Latino voters, reversing a longstanding Republican trend. And he won by more than 2-to-1 among voters of all races 30 years old and younger.

That dynamic was telling in Ohio, which President Bush won in 2004, and in Pennsylvania, where McCain poured in millions of dollars of scarce resources. Obama won both.

Obama also took Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey and New York, all states with hefty electoral vote hauls, NBC News projected. He also won Virginia, reversing 40 years of Republican victories there.

McCain countered with Texas and numerous smaller states, primarily in the South and the Great Plains.

In interviews with NBC News, aides to McCain said they were proud that they had put up a good fight in “historically difficult times.”

A senior adviser said McCain himself was “fine” but that he felt “he let his staff and supporters down.”

Obama will have a strongly Democratic Congress on the other end of Capitol Hill. The Democrats won strong majorities in both the House and the Senate. NBC News projected that the party would fall just short of a procedurally important 60 percent “supermajority” in the Senate, however.
Record turnout delays key results

In the end, Florida, the scene of electoral chaos in recent elections, had little impact. Florida had been closely watched, but results there and in other closely contested states were delayed after record numbers of voters flocked to polling stations, energized by an election in which they would select either the nation’s first black president or its first female vice president.

Obama, who led in nearly all public opinion polls, and McCain both launched get-out-the-vote efforts that led to long lines at polling stations in a contest that Democrats were also hoping would help them expand their majorities in both houses of Congress.

Americans voted in numbers unprecedented since women were given the franchise in 1920. Secretaries of state predicted turnouts approaching 90 percent in Virginia and Colorado and 80 percent or more in big states like Ohio, California, Texas, Virginia, Missouri and Maryland.

At New Shiloh Church Ministries on Mastin Lake in Huntsville, Ala., Stephanie Lacy-Conerly brought along a chair, expecting to stay for hours.

“It’s exciting,” she said. “It’s an historical moment.”

Election officials around the country braced for problems, but only minor issues were reported. However, the McCain campaign filed suit in Virginia, home to several major military bases, complaining that absentee ballots were not mailed on time to many members of the military serving overseas.

History played down in favor of issues

Voters were lured to the polls by an election with the potential to make history. Both campaigns played down the historic nature of their tickets, however, preferring to emphasize what they offered as plans to bring sweeping change to Washington and close the door on the two-term presidency of George W. Bush, whose approval ratings are near historic lows.

Election experts predicted that as many as 140 million Americans would vote, many of them minority, immigrant and young Americans who were casting ballots for the first time.

Maria Reyes, who immigrated from El Salvador and was sworn in as a citizen in August, was one of them. She cast her ballot with help from her daughter, Elvia.

“It’s wonderful time for our country right now — Obama!” Reyes said as she waved a small American flag.

In the Little Saigon section of Los Angeles, Timothy Ngo, a Vietnamese immigrant, turned out to support McCain.

“I came here as a refugee, so Mr. McCain and I grew up and fought in the same war in Vietnam,” Ngo said.

Six in 10 voters picked the economy as the most important issue facing the nation, according to data from national exit polls examined by msnbc.com. Only 9 percent said terrorism was the most important issue.

Pessimism over the economy is usually a grim omen for the party in control of the White House. In the elections of 1992, 1980, 1960 and 1932, economic distress, to some degree, resulted in the party in control losing the White House.
Obama, McCain cast their ballots

Obama and his wife, Michelle, voted with their young daughters at their sides at Beulah Shoesmith Elementary School in Hyde Park, Ill. The family was ushered inside ahead of a line of their neighbors that wrapped around the block.

Fellow voters watched in silence and snapped cell-phone pictures. They cheered when Obama held up his validation slip with a smile and said, “I voted.”

“The journey ends, but voting with my daughters, that was a big deal,” he told reporters later.

Obama’s final days of campaigning were bittersweet: He was mourning the loss of his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who helped raise him but died of cancer Sunday night and never got to see the results of the historic election.

In Delaware, Obama’s running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, went to the polls with his elderly mother. Speaking to reporters on his plane, Biden said he had made a deal with his wife, Jill.

“If you get the vice presidency and get elected, you can get a dog,” Biden said his wife told him. “I know what kind I want, [but] I don’t know what kind I’m going to get yet. We’re not there yet. The deal’s not closed yet.”

McCain, meanwhile, cast his ballot early Tuesday at a church near his home in central Phoenix. A small crowd cheered “Go, John, go!” and “We love you!” as he stepped out of a sport utility vehicle with his wife, Cindy. One person carried a sign that read, “Use your brain, vote McCain!”

Palin returned to where her political career began to cast her vote in the snow-dusted, two-story Wasilla City Hall where she once presided as a small-town mayor.

Palin, accompanied by her husband, Todd, voted just after 7 a.m. Tuesday, pushing aside a red, white and blue curtain on a voting booth and handing her white paper ballot to a clerk.

With Tom Curry of msnbc.com and Kelly O’Donnell, Steve Handelsman and George Lewis of NBC News. The following NBC stations contributed to this report: KPNX of Phoenix; WAFF of Huntsville, Ala.; WLWT of Cincinnati; and WTMJ of Milwaukee.