by Mark Silva
CHICAGO - "When the polls close, the journey ends,'' Sen. Barack Obama said today of the long presidential campaign's close, as he boarded a campaign plane home to Chicago to watch historic election returns.
But for one of these candidates, Obama or Sen. John McCain, the journey is just beginning. An intensive transition will get underway, and the 44th president will be inaugurated on Jan. 20 at a time of likely recession at home and protracted wars abroad.
The expectations surrounding the next president could be difficult for any one leader to meet.
Yet, after 21 months, in Obama's case, something indeed was ending today - and reporters could see it on Obama's face as he boarded his campaign plane in Springfield, Mo. (pictured here in photos by Emanuel Dumand of AFP Photo.)
For McCain, who formally launched his second campaign for the presidency last year - he fell short of the Republican Party's nomination in 2000 and finally claimed it in 2008 - another journey also was ending.
McCain, who had suffered the attacks of George W. Bush's successful campaign in 2000, waged his own high-flying assault against Obama in a campaign that pitted the relative experience of the two combatants against their visions for the nation. Yet in the end, McCain was able to joke about his own fortunes in a good-humored appearance on Saturday Night Live that also was evocative of a journey ending.
McCain staged his last campaign rally in Grand Junction, Colo., today (seen here shaking supporters hands, in a photo by Stephan Savoia of AP.)
He and wife Cindy shared a public, private moment there (captured in the picture by Robyn Beck of AFP / Getty Images.)
Post a comment
(Anonymous comments will not be posted. Comments aren't posted immediately. They're screened for relevance to the topic, obscenity, spam and over-the-top personal attacks. We can't always get them up as soon as we'd like so please be patient. Thanks for visiting The Swamp.)