Just seconds after the networks announced that Barack Obama would be the next president of the United States, we sat down with Ambassador Andrew Young for a wide-ranging conversation punctuated by the sounds of cheering and horns honking on the Atlanta streets below.
Here are some of the highlights — the 15-minute conversation is here and below.
Obama and the times:
“It’s almost like he’s a god-made man for this moment. He’s got an African father, but he’s had none of the black suffering or experience we had in the south or the big cities of the north. He was given a different kind of childhood in Hawaii, but also in Indonesia, with a Chinese step-father and surrounded by Chinese Muslims. And so he’s grown up almost with a global, cultural DNA.”
Symbols:
“You cannot eat symbols. And nothing tastes worse than a symbolism that doesn’t fill a need. I shy away from all the symbols. Because now we’ve got to deliver. Now, I think we can.”
Obama, the past and the future:
“I have never met anybody better prepared. I thought that Clinton was a brilliant young man. I know that Jimmy Carter was the smartest people I’ve known. John Kennedy. But I haven’t seen anybody as calm, as cool, as collected, and as disciplined and organized in his ability — Jimmy Carter was personally disciplined. But he couldn’t organize the people around him. This has been an almost flawless campaign. If he can run a government or end a war with the same efficiency that he has run this campaign, we’re on the path for glory.”
What’s ahead:
“There’s a $700 billion bill to start with. There’s maybe as much as a three trillion dollar deficit he’s got to deal with, so the celebration can’t last long.”
Andrew Young and Adaora Udoji