Almost there

Well not quite, we still have several months and thousands of miles before we reach the end of our journey. It looks however as if Barack Obama is almost at the end of the first leg of his journey to the White House.
I have taken the title of this entry from the front page of the latest edition of The Economist which I picked up in an underground station in Berlin.
This bible of progressive capitalism is slowly coming round to Obama’s side. Its leader writer is concerned that his rhetoric on the economy is too left wing, but the magazine does seem intrigued, maybe even hopeful, at the prospect of an Obama Presidency.
As it points out, in 1960 when Senator Obama’s white mother and black father married, their union was illegal in over half the states in America. 
Now their son, whose granny still lives in a village in Kenya, is on the threshold of the most powerful office in the world. His personal experiences, which have shaped his political thinking, are of a world where we are all interlinked. Black and white, north and south, rich and poor. His view of humanity stretches way beyond Texas, or even Washington.
Perhaps, just perhaps, we are entering a new political era, one where an internationalist view of the world prevails over the narrow mindset of old.
Many of my friends, and most of my family, find my interest, some would say obsession, with politics to be a rather quaint character trait.
They regard me as slightly eccentric as, like most people, they only engage with the political process when they can be bothered to drag themselves to a polling station every few years, or when reaching for the off button the minute a politician graces their TV screen.
But politics – and democracy - does matter, in the most fundamental way possible. I spent yesterday morning at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. There are no words adequate to describe the horror of the Holocaust. So I will end with this sentence from Primo Levi, the scientist and writer who survived Auschwitz, only to commit suicide in 1987.
“It happened, therefore it can happen again. That is the core of what we have to say.”
So it does matter who is in the White House, Holyrood or the council chambers. It matters more than anything, yes, much, much more than handbags.