DAVIS: How we will feel if Obama wins

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By Lanny Davis

On the morning of Nov. 5, if Sen. Barack Obama is the president-elect, I think most people - regardless of their party or ideology - will take pride in the fact that America is a purple nation, not a red vs. blue one, and will feel good about their country and government again.

Of course, there will be many angry and disappointed John McCain supporters and Republican conservatives. But I believe that most people, even some of the most disappointed Republicans, will experience a "holy mackerel" moment.

"Holy mackerel! Look what America has just done. We have just elected an African-American president of the United States!"

To appreciate the reason why that reaction is likely to be widespread, a brief review of American history is in order.

It was in 1620 - 388 years ago - when the first Africans arrived in chains at or near Jamestown, Va., and became the first group of America's slaves. Since then, we can trace an unbroken string of moral failures by many of our nation's leaders and by most Americans in dealing with slavery, racism and racial discrimination over the years.

For example, our esteemed founders - Washington, Jefferson, even Benjamin Franklin - knew and said that slavery was morally evil. But they also owned slaves. As a political compromise, they agreed to guarantee the continuance of slavery by not outlawing it in the Constitution. They even agreed to write into the Constitution that a slave would be counted as 60 percent of a free American.

Even the greatest president of all, Abraham Lincoln, who saved the Union and opposed slavery as immoral, never openly supported the abolition of slavery, only its containment in the Southern states.

He supported fugitive-slave laws that returned escaped slaves to their masters, though he knew they would face certain brutality or even death.

And his great executive act of emancipation in 1863 was hardly that at all. As we know, the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves only in the rebellious Confederate states (where he could do little to liberate them) and continued slavery in the Union's Northern and border states (where he had the power to free them).

Even amending the Constitution to free all slaves and guarantee their due process and equal-protection rights as U.S. citizens - through passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments immediately after the Civil War - became just another broken promise for former slaves.