Watershed.(THE ELECTION II)(Barack Obama)

TO understand what a watershed Barack Obama's election was, one need only compare him with his predecessors. George Washington owned slaves; so, for a time, did Ulysses Grant. Woodrow Wilson showed Birth of a Nation, pro-Klan propaganda, in the White House. Warren Harding's enemies claimed that he was part black (Harding, to his credit, was unfazed by the rumor). Every World War II veteran who won the White House--from General Eisenhower to Lieutenant Bush--served in a segregated military. The belief in equal rights that lies at the heart of our nation's founding extended to African Americans--Thomas Jefferson, who owned hundreds of them and (probably) slept with one of them, so understood it--but reality lagged for most of our history.

In our lifetime, individual blacks have risen to the top in numerous fields--arts, entertainment, business, government, the military. Winning the White House is a symbol of consolidated social progress. But symbols matter; there are no historical placemats of secretaries of state. Even Americans who did not support Obama can feel proud for their country in the wake of his election.

Obama's victory means different things to different supporters. Black Americans--including those, like Obama himself, who have no family experience of American slavery, and hardly even personal experience of ...