Winds of change

Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, bringing hope not only to the American people but to the whole world. But he has not an easy task, as he will have to correct all the policies of the Bush administration which sunk the country in one of its deepest economic crisis, involved it in an unjustified war which has taken thousands of lives and which has destroyed the reputation of the United States around the world. Many didn't believe that Obama would be elected, and they had enough reasons to think that. The country still has an important conservative basis and racism is still an issue. But Obama was smart, he never played the racist-card and he focused his campaign in proposing concrete ways to deal with the mess Mr Bush has left, instead of focusing on attacking the rival candidate, as McCain did. The number of reasons that made McCain lose are many, such as his age, his terrible choice of running mate, his support of the war in Iraq, between many others.
But the fact is that Obama won by an ample margin (Obama 338 electoral votes, McCain 161), and now he, John Biden and all their staff will be in charge of cleaning up Bush's mess. The Democrats also performed well in the Senate election, although they didn't reach enough seats to have a comfortable majority.
The eyes of the world were in the American election, here in Europe it was possible to see posters with Obama's image, Obama action figures in the stores and a lot of enthusiastic people disposed to change their perception of the United States.

But Mexico, had to turn its attention to a national tragedy. In the same day of the US election, an airplane carrying the Secretary of Interior and other government officials crashed in the heart of Mexico City. There were no survivors, and the Mexican federal government is now facing a huge crisis. Some speculate it could have been a revenge by one of the leading drug gangs whose main leader was captured some weeks ago, but I consider that very unlikely as all the airplanes belonging to the federal government are always protected by the army.