DaytonDailyNews.com

It is, first of all, astounding.

Perhaps how astounding you find the election of Barack Obama depends on how old you are. The young and the not-so-young are from different places on this.

But you needn't be very old to remember, say, 2002. Imagine yourself then pondering the possibility of the country electing a liberal Democratic black man named Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency of the United States in 2008.

Utterly preposterous.

In those days, people who thought about politics were convinced that the first black man would have to be a Republican. Colin Powell, maybe.

But a liberal Democrat? No, not even if his name were Jack Armstrong. He would conjure up thoughts of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and anger and racial animosity, and it'd all be over before it started.

The possibility started to seem less preposterous in 2004, when the country was introduced to Barack Obama. He had a certain way about him. He movingly and convincingly presented struggling Americans as one group, joined by their struggles, not separated by race.

Four years later, his race had somehow receded in public consciousness, as other concerns took precedence. But the profound nature of the week's turning point ought not be missed. It ought not be lost in a discussion of whether the new president will get a program enacted, whether partisanship is waning or gathering strength, whether the issues the new president faces will be those that are apparent now.

Before all that — without serving a day — Barack Obama is a figure of history. His name will live. A country that was founded on white freedom and black slavery has a black president.

Sen. Obama won the presidential election in a year when a white male Democratic nominee could hardly have lost it, given the poor standing of the Republicans. And, yet, there were always doubts. Some voters didn't even try to conceal their racism, and others were convinced that Sen. Obama is a Muslim in disguise or even a terrorist.

If not for the polls, one might have thought he was losing, up until the end. And a lot of people were worried that the polls were missing something — something ugly.

Sen. Obama showed himself under nearly two years of grueling pressure and relentless scrutiny to be remarkable. He made it all look easy, never breaking a sweat, even when things went badly. That is the thing about graceful people.

He approached the election in as dignified, nonpolarizing a style as possible, given that he was in a competition. He is the Jackie Robinson of democracy, in more ways than one. Sen. Obama didn't face the same kind of immediate, in-your-face indignities. But he faced the same dangers. And he came through the same way.

The election does not mean that prejudice has disappeared as a force in American society. It means that one prejudice — the one that has tortured the nation as no other — wanes dramatically.

True, some Republican voters are locked into antipathy. They're shocked by the very idea of Barack Obama. This loud, bitter minority is egged on by voices in radio, television and elsewhere who make their livings fostering polarization.

But those voices have now been rejected in turn by Republican voters — in the primaries, where one of their least favorite candidates won — and now by the country.

Now the son of a black man and white woman seeks to bring the country together. Reconciliation has been the story of his life so far. Can he achieve the reconciliation he stands for? That would be astounding.

But already he has changed the way the country sees itself, changed the way the world sees America, changed the way young members of this increasingly diverse society may legitimately see their futures.

If, indeed, change is what he is about, the start is stunning.