December 31, 2008 11:12 PM UTC

2008's Top Story: The Historic Moment

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• by: Colorado Pols

Video courtesy colojason

The Rocky Mountain News editorial board said it with eloquence we have no need to paraphrase:

This nation was forged in the promise of freedom. For its entire history it has provided greater opportunity and liberty for more of its citizens than any other country on Earth. But it was born with a great stain that endured for many decades: the institution of slavery, then the evil of segregation and second-class citizenship for the slaves’ descendants.

The fact that an African-American could be nominated by a major party as its candidate for president only 45 years after Martin Luther King Jr.’s equally historic address on the Washington National Mall, at a moment when the bitter-enders of Jim Crow had yet to surrender, is breathtaking, inspiring and a tale to be told to our children’s children.

Let the cynics chuckle and sneer if they like at the classical backdrop at Invesco Field and the image it was intended to evoke. There is an arc from Lincoln to Obama, by way of King.

…as Obama approached the finish, he began a cadenced call for Americans to search for common ground on the difficult issues of the day – a call of the sort for which he is justifiably renowned and has few if any peers.

He was eloquent (if sometimes simplistic), and by the time he referenced the Lincoln Memorial and “a young preacher from Georgia” you could sense that he’d achieved his goal of connecting – for however long it remains to be seen – with a large swath of a very interested electorate.

…we have no intention of a line-by-line evaluation of Obama’s policies here. For the moment, we prefer to dwell on the spectacle, the energy and the dreams that were on display Thursday night in Colorado’s capital city, as history unfolded before the world’s eyes.