The news from South Carolina is staggering: 54% of the state voted for Obama, more than Edwards and Clinton combined. Do I miss Bill Clinton? Yes. Do I want his wife to be president? No.

But President Obama, perhaps w/ Clinton as VP? John McCain could exhume Reagan’s fetid corpse and waive it like a flag, and still get crushed.

As the Times pointed out the other day, the whole world really is watching. Facing the incredible challenges of the future, a time when the very warp and weft of the American landscape is going to be stretched to the limit, more than ever we need a leader who represents the American Idea, which has too often in the past been mistaken for the same old boring white men who’ve come to be taken for its representative.

America is predicated on ideas; in fact, it’s all we really have in common with each other, a shared set of ideas about how a divergent group of people can come together and make a life, and a country. Background, history, all that is so thin on the ground here, too often mined completely out. We need continual refreshment of the Idea of who we are; reflections on who we were, as John McCain is wont to do, will only comfort us in our slow demise, not lead us forward.

Is he young? Yes. Is he a person of values? Unquestionably. Has he had to trade his beliefs to get to where he is today? Not one lick. And perhaps, just perhaps, an energetic person of integrity and vision, whose skin reflects the mosaic that is America, might just also be the person to help heal centuries of hurt, and in so doing finally unleash the real untested promise this country has been saving up for the time it’s needed most.

Right person. Right values. Right time. Say it out loud, he’s Barack and I’m proud.