YOU CANNOT
Never before in the history of American politics has there been assembled a cast of characters so ripe for satire. It has been a columnist's dream.
There was President George W. Bush, the stooge who, grinning all the way, has fumbled his way through the English language for two full terms.
Then there's Vice President Dick Cheney, the archvillain, a man who has been compared with Darth Vader and even reportedly dressed as the "Star Wars" character at a costume party.
Let's face it, how often are we going to find a vice president who shoots a lawyer in the face during a hunting trip?
We had presidential candidate John McCain, who looks older than his 96-year-old mother, and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who looked like a movie star and shot like Annie Oakley.
We can't forget about Hillary and Bill Clinton and how easy they were to poke fun at.
And, of course, there was Joe Biden, who thought Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president during the 1929 stock market crash and that television was the popular means of communication during that era.
We got to talk about hockey moms and Joe the Plumber during the past three months. And name me another country where lipstick on pigs has been introduced into a presidential campaign.
With only Biden left to satirize, it is going to be a tough go for columnists in the coming months. Barack Obama is far too mainstream to be any fun.
On a more serious note, here are a few observations following Tuesday's election.
The stock market didn't go down 1,000 points the day after Obama's victory, but the Dow Jones average did drop about 930 points in two days, the worst two-day plunge since 1987.
Republicans control the wealth in this country and Republicans are clearly worried and about where we are headed with a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress.
But then Republicans always seem to panic when a Democrat is elected president.
Europeans, however, are overjoyed with our selection of Obama as president. Early Wednesday morning a reader in England wrote me the following note:
"My husband and I suspect many Brits are very bleary eyed today as we stayed up until 4 a.m. to watch Obama winning the presidency. The last time we watched a momentous event from America we had been married four months and we stayed up all night to watch a man walk on the moon.
"Obama comes to the presidency with a great deal of good will and hope. I doubt very much whether he can fulfill all his promises as he will be manacled by the economic situation. I hope very much that he will be given some slack."
The woman is right. Americans--Democrats, Republicans and independents--must give the president-elect a chance. It will take time to undo much of the mess he has inherited.
Obama is intelligent, fair-minded and much closer to the political center than many Republican right-wingers believe. Liberal Democrats may soon discover that the new president is too conservative for them.
Some have compared Obama to John F. Kennedy because he, like JFK, is young, intelligent, well-spoken and a Harvard graduate with an attractive wife and small children.
Those of us who recall Kennedy may remember that there was great skepticism by some because he was our country's first Catholic president.
Now there is a concern in some corners because Obama is our first black president.
This concerns me because I have heard more racial slurs used in the past three days than I have heard in the past 20 years combined. Unfortunately, we still seem to be a country that is divided by more than just our politics.
A woman told me a story the other night that bears repeating. She said that a little more than 50 years ago she was shopping with her mother in a Richmond department store when she noticed a small black girl fidgeting because she needed to go to the bathroom.
She said she watched the black child and the child's mother rush for the elevator and head for the store's basement.
"Why didn't she just use the bathroom over there?" the woman said she asked her mother.
"Colored people are not allowed to use that bathroom," she was told.
"Mama, that's not right," she recalled replying.
Unless you have been in that black child's position, you cannot appreciate how significant Barack Obama's election is to African-Americans.
Let us all work together for the sake of America.
Donnie Johnston:
Email: djohnston@freelancestar.com