In Italy Walter Veltroni's "Partito Democratico" has put up posters, celebrating the Obama Victory. "Il Mondo Cambia -- the World Is Changing." Though I contend that a special puddle in Dante's "Purgatorio" should be reserved for graffiti "artists," were I still in Italy, I would be tempted to scrawl on the poster: "Speriam!"In the midst of the post-election inundation of commentary (none more thoughtful than Peter Nixon's post below) two other pieces caught my attention. Others who may not have occasion to see them might be interested.The first is from today's Wall Street Journal, written by former Clinton aide, Lanny Davis, who sets the election in historical perspective. "The Obama Realignment" concludes:

[Obama] appears to mean what he says and he says what he means: It is time to take a "time out" from the hyperpartisanship of the last generation, and to begin a new experiment in bipartisan government, getting government back into the solutions business. His is a fact-driven approach to politics that isolates the strident, purist voices of the left and right who demonize those they differ with rather than disagree and debate them.

For these reasons, it would be a mistake to assume that the Obama landslide victory and the appearance of this new majority coalition in Tuesday's election results was a fluke -- a result of a "perfect storm" of the Iraq war, the economic crisis, and George Bush's unpopularity that made John McCain's task of winning in 2008 almost impossible.Rather, years from now we will probably look back at Nov. 4, 2008, the way we look back at the five previous realigning elections. Something fundamental has changed. In this case, not only has a unique majority coalition of liberals, conservatives, moderates and independents come to power, but a unique style of governance as well, as exemplified by Barack Obama's speech Tuesday night.If the future President Obama makes progress on solving the huge economic and social problems facing this country, and on securing the country from future terrorist attacks, he may well be viewed as the Democrat who created a long-term new political majority not seen since FDR.

The second from today's Boston Globe is by Andrew Bacevich who invokes the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr to issue some cautionary advice:

Here lies the statesman's dilemma: You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. To refrain from resisting evil for fear of violating God's laws is irresponsible. Yet for the powerful to pretend to interpret God's will qualifies as presumptuous. To avert evil, action is imperative; so too is self-restraint. Even worthy causes pursued blindly yield morally problematic results.Niebuhr specialized in precise distinctions. He supported US intervention in World War II - and condemned the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended that war. After 1945, Niebuhr believed it just and necessary to contain the Soviet Union. Yet he forcefully opposed US intervention in Vietnam.The vast claims of Bush's second inaugural - with the president discerning history's "visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty" - would have appalled Niebuhr, precisely because Bush meant exactly what he said. In international politics, true believers are more dangerous than cynics.Grandiose undertakings produce monstrous byproducts. In the eyes of critics, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo show that all of Bush's freedom talk is simply a lie. Viewed from a Niebuhrean perspective, they become the predictable if illegitimate offspring of Bush's convictions. Better to forget utopia, leaving it to God to determine history's trajectory.On the stump, Obama did not sound much like a follower of Niebuhr. Campaigns reward not introspection, but simplistic reassurance: "Yes, we can!" Yet as the dust now settles, we might hope that the victor will sober up and rediscover his Niebuhrean inclinations. Sobriety in this case begins with abrogating what Niebuhr called "our dreams of managing history," triggered by the end of the Cold War and reinforced by Sept. 11. "The course of history," he emphasized, "cannot be coerced."We've tried having a born-again president intent on eliminating evil. It didn't work. May our next president acknowledge the possibility that, as Niebuhr put it, "the evils against which we contend are frequently the fruits of illusions which are similar to our own." Facing our present predicament requires that we shed illusions about America that would have offended Jesus himself.Obama has written that he took from reading Niebuhr "the compelling idea that there's serious evil in the world" along with the conviction that evil's persistence should not be "an excuse for cynicism and inaction." Yet Niebuhr also taught him that "we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things." As a point of departure for reformulating US foreign policy, we could do a lot worse.