Washington File

Over the last few months, I wrote and reported on air many times about the importance of a Barack Obama victory to African-Americans and other minorities.

But I am embarrassed to admit I greatly underestimated that impact.

While reporting from the White House on election night, I witnessed an impromptu celebration on Pennsylvania Avenue. It happened only minutes after the American networks called the election for Obama.

You could hear shouts and yelling as a crowd of mostly young people poured down the nearby streets to the White House. It caught everyone by surprise and for the first few minutes the mood was not clear.

The Secret Service was clearly apprehensive, television crews prepared for turmoil. Instead, it was a group of people shouting and dancing and having a good time.

There were honking cars and American flags and absolutely no sign of trouble, drunkenness or violence. It was a scene that played out all through downtown Washington.

In fact, as I drove home, past the 17th street intersection that is one of Washington's major drug markets, the thugs that usually loiter there were actually waving small American flags at the cars passing by.

Tears of joy

On the television, from Chicago, Jesse Jackson, himself a former presidential candidate, had tears streaming down his face.

From Thailand, that giant of public service, Colin Powell, told an interviewer that he and his family all cried as well when Obama was named the winner.

The next day, at the State Department, Secretary Condoleezza Rice promised to help the new administration adjust to office and then, struggling to keep her composure, talked about her pride as a black woman in an Obama victory.

But it was in the parking lot of my local 7-Eleven that I really got it, really understood what this victory meant to so many people.

A couple of years ago, I was covering a story near Shreveport, Louisiana.

Driving back to the motel in the evening, I caught a radio broadcast from one of those super-stations out of Tennessee. Two right-wing hosts were interviewing Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont and a Democratic presidential candidate in 2004.

Dean had just been named chairman of the Democratic party and was in Tennessee opening offices and hiring staff for what he called his "fifty-state strategy."

For Dean, that meant fighting for votes in every county, every state in every election, a break from the traditional Democratic effort of husbanding money and resources for races the party felt it could win or were very close. To Dean that was defensive and short-sighted.

He was in Tennessee looking for young potential candidates. Men and women who could run for state and local office and in the future run nationally for House and Senate seats.

His radio hosts were having none of this plan and ridiculed his efforts, just as many establishment Democrats had.

Paul Begala, a former Clinton aide, scoffed at the strategy, saying it amounted to "just hiring a bunch of staff people to wander around Utah and Mississippi and pick their noses."

Undeterred, Dean doggedly travelled the country, reorganizing state committees from the bottom up, hunting for bright new faces and providing expertise and funds for voter registration and candidate recruitment.

Beware of socialism. That's the Republican message in North Carolina.

The incumbent, Senator Elizabeth Dole, is in a close race with Democratic challenger Kay Hagen and Dole's television ads intone: "These liberals want complete control of government in a time of crisis. All branches of government. No checks and balances. No debate. No independence. That's the truth behind Kay Hagen. If she wins, they get a blank cheque."

If nothing else, the tenor of these ads shows that Dole is clearly worried, and with good reason. She currently trails Hagen in the polls.

Those liberals are coming. That's also the message in Georgia and Mississippi.

In both states, where Republicans normally win by huge margins, their Senate races are close. So close, in fact, that GOP Senator Saxby Chambliss may lose the Peach State while Mississippi's Democrat challenger Ron Musgrove is within five percentage points in a race the Republicans won last time by 29.

A rising tide

An unpopular Republican president is part of the reason for this surge of Democrats. But another factor is that large numbers of Republican incumbents are simply not running again, many having admitted they would face tough contests.

It's apocryphal, but nonetheless a much-repeated story.

Texas lawmakers in a graveyard late at night, are copying names from gravestones, names they intended to register for an upcoming election.

"How tough is this? Damn near impossible."

It wouldn't be much of a stretch to imagine that line being used this morning by Republican John McCain's key advisers as they survey the landscape with two weeks to go in the U.S. presidential elections.

To hear it in Washington, Wednesday night's presidential debate could be a difference-maker. It could be the event that seals the deal for one or another of the two candidates.

Not a chance. The first two debates were boring, dull frauds.

Here's what the Commission on Presidential Debates, the non-profit sponsor of the event, has to say: "The public deserves to hear and see the candidates offer and defend their positions on critical issues facing our country in the most thoughtful and in-depth manner that television time constraints will allow. Loosening the constraints within the 90-minute debate will allow for more serious examination of complicated questions."

C'mon. Who's kidding who?

These "debates" are not debates. They are recitals of talking points. Nobody talks to each other and they seldom even answer the questions.

Just when you thought you'd heard it all on the U.S. financial crisis...

Former AIG CEOs Robert Willumstad, left, and Martin Sullivan take the oath before testifying to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday. (Lawrence Jackson/Associated Press)

You'll remember that $85-billion US taxpayer loan to the American International Group (AIG). That was made on Sept. 16. In return, AIG surrendered 79.9 per cent of its stock to the government.

Less than a week later, the company's executives, clearly to ease the mental strain they had been undergoing, pitched up at the exclusive St. Regis Resort at Monarch Beach in California.

It's not easy running a once-profitable insurance company into the ground, then waiting nervously for taxpayers to bail you out. The resort allowed these men and women to pull themselves together.

Unfortunately for some, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform got some copies of the bill.

Bobbing and weaving throughout the evening, Sarah Palin wowed her supporters, certainly energized the Republican base and surprised her critics with her debate performance in St. Louis last night. She was feisty, folksy and firm.

Democrat Joe Biden, left, and Republican Sarah Palin participate in the vice-presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis, Thursday night. (Rick Wilking/Pool/Associated Press)

In one post-debate poll, CNN found that 84 per cent of people said the Alaskan governor exceeded their expectations.

But when asked who won the debate, CNN said those same people picked her opponent, Senator Joe Biden, by a 51-38 margin. Many said Palin was too scripted and avoided too many questions, slipping into pat answers that seemed prepared by her coaches and did nothing to indicate she was in command of the facts.

The difference for many, said poll analysts, was Biden's clear edge on "substance."

I would have thought spotting the Loch Ness monster would have been more likely than watching some of the coalitions of congressmen and women that lined up to defeat President George W. Bush's $700-billion bailout package Monday.

Democrat Peter DeFazio, left and Republican Virgil Goode each opposed the bailout bill. (Associated Press)

There was Democrat Peter DeFazio of Oregon, voting no.

So did Virgil Goode of Virginia.

DeFazio is a progressive, voting for government intervention in health care, labour, education and the environment. He opposes the Iraq war, free trade agreements and tax cuts.

Goode is very conservative Republican. He was first elected as a Democrat but was thrown out of the party when he supported the impeachment of Bill Clinton. He was overwhelmingly re-elected as a Republican, running on a record of opposition to abortion, gun control, same-sex marriage and gay rights.

Set aside for a moment whether or not you support the Bush administration's plan for a Wall Street financial bailout. Let's just look at the involvement of Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

On Wednesday, the Arizona senator startled everyone. He said he would suspend his campaign, return to Washington, postpone the first presidential debate if necessary. Partisanship was threatening the $700-billion US rescue package. He was going to make it work.

For days prior, the White House and congressional leaders had been hammering away at a deal. Despite widespread opposition from taxpaying voters, things were moving forward.

President George W. Bush had already made key concessions to Capitol Hill (and, more important, to voters angry with the plan) and Capitol Hill was rushing a rescue package forward, just as Bush asked.

There was opposition. Fiscal conservatives – mostly Republicans in the House of Representatives, but Democrats as well – were still going to vote against any bailout. They were and are in the minority. "Let market forces rule," they say, "That's the bedrock of capitalism."

That was pretty much the situation Wednesday. Most people saw a deal coming by the weekend.

McCain saw something different.