America's historic election year

By James Coomarasamy
BBC News, Washington

When Barack Obama won the Iowa caucuses in January, he did more than prick the bubble of inevitability surrounding Hillary Clinton.

His victory in a rural state, with a 95% white population, showed he could break through racial barriers.

It was also the first tangible sign of his campaign's organisational efficiency; something that would prove decisive in a primary campaign which turned into a war of attrition.

Something else changed.

From Iowa onwards, it seemed the Illinois senator was at the centre of the election's narrative.

Little-known candidate

Most of the questions being asked were about him.

Would Americans trust this little-known, bi-racial, candidate to run their country?

Would there be any skeletons in the closet of an ethics reformer, who had come up through the notoriously corrupt Illinois political system?

Could he take on the mighty Clinton machine and win?

"The Obama team was caught off guard by the appearance of a new, exciting and combative face"

The answer to that last question was yes, but only after he had had his mettle thoroughly tested, by the woman he has now chosen to be his secretary of state.

Determined and, at times, mocking, Senator Clinton constantly questioned her younger rival's experience.

Her arguments became familiar.

She would be "ready on day one", he would not.

She would be prepared to answer the 3am White House phone call, he would leave it ringing.

But, in the end, a slim majority of Democratic voters decided that Mr Obama's mantras of "change" and "hope" - familiar electoral slogans, packaged in an unfamiliar way - were their prevailing sentiments.

He set new fundraising records, with a genuinely innovative internet strategy, that relied heavily on small donations.

He also outwitted his opponent tactically; punishing her for ignoring the smaller, caucus states, whose delegates compensated for his losses in bigger, rustbelt states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The Clinton train ploughed on, refusing to accept defeat, but it was clear that it was heading for the buffers long before Senator Clinton took her final campaign curtain call in Washington, on June 7th.

Inflammatory statements

There were hiccups along the way for Mr Obama.

An early, unexpected defeat in New Hampshire; a failure to win big states on Super Tuesday.

Worst of all, the period when inflammatory statements by his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, were hardly off America's TV screens.

That, in a sense, was his 3am wake-up call.

He reacted by writing and delivering a speech on race that won widespread praise, even from political opponents.

Having kept quiet about the issue until then, largely to avoid being labelled a "black candidate", he turned that part of his strategy on its head.

It was a gamble that paid off.

Although Reverend Wright later made a brief, cameo appearance, by then, his threat to the Obama campaign had been neutralised.

Mockery

After the intensity of the primary contests, the general election might have been an anticlimax, were it not for Republican candidate John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate.

The Obama team was caught off guard by the appearance of a new, exciting and combative face, who refreshed the parts of the Republican base that other vice presidential candidates could not have reached.

Living up to his "no drama Obama" nickname, the Democratic nominee refused to join in the mockery of Sarah Palin coming from some quarters.

As the Republican ticket drew level, then briefly overtook him in the opinion polls, he held his nerve and waited for his opponents to make a mistake.

He did not have to wait long.

On 29 September, John McCain announced that he was suspending his campaign, to try and broker a financial bailout deal in Congress.

"The younger man appeared to have the calmer head in a crisi"

It was a fateful decision.

There can have been few presidential election campaigns whose closing stages have seen a real-time political drama in which both candidates were called on to participate.

But the unfolding economic crisis set these two sitting senators just such a test.

John McCain's grand gesture was meant to be consistent with his "country first" slogan, but his inability to broker a deal with House Republicans made him look impetuous and ineffective.

His assertion that "the fundamentals of the US economy were strong" and his economic advisor Phil Gramm's comment that America was only experiencing a "mental recession" made him and his team seem out of touch.

The younger man appeared to have the calmer head in a crisis.

New generation

From that point on, Barack Obama never really looked back.

His calmness was carried over into the presidential debates, where combative McCain performances were not rated highly by voters.

In a stroke of bad luck for the Republican candidate, his greater foreign policy experience suddenly seemed less important, as domestic issues dominated the agenda.

Questions remained, to the very end, about the role that Mr Obama's race would play in polling booths, but fears among his supporters of a "Bradley effect" - whereby white voters would tell pollsters they would vote for the black candidate, but would, in reality, make a different choice - proved unfounded.

When the votes were counted, the Democratic candidate had won by a clear eight million votes and by a 365-173 margin in the electoral college.

In an ominous sign for Republicans, he brought a new generation to the polls and won states - such as North Carolina, Indiana and Virginia - which had been out of the reach of Democrats for decades.

The President-elect's subdued, determined speech on election night, coupled with John McCain's gracious words of concession, were the perfect coda to a truly historic campaign, in which the United States had both surprised and uplifted itself, by electing a young, bi-racial Senator as its 44th commander-in-chief.