"I think . . . this is the precise moment when this kind of journalism matters, when we have to remind people of the history and the previous policies implemented by the people that are at the center of Obama’s foreign policy team right now, because we’re going to be living with these people for the next four years running the show. And I think it’s incredibly important to be all over this right now, before they’re named."

I thought we were entering an era where we would do without heroes, but we have been given a hero, which is a bit like being given a chainsaw or a credit card: you have to be careful how you use it. This moment of joy will subside, and those who expected Obama to be flawless or to keep inspiring them forever and a day may be disappointed. Still, his strength is that he speaks the language of community organizers, of "si, se puede," and that, at least for a while, he may spread rather than consolidate power. When you come down to it though, that's our responsibility, not his. His responsibility is to preside over a nation that must shrink from empire, on economic as well as moral grounds, from the mad consumptive prosperity of the postwar era, and from the profligate environmental destruction that went with it. Perhaps he will be our Gorbachev, a man with the boldness to yield and reduce.