Amsterdamage

Spent last week in Amsterdam on business, but managed to sprinkle a healthy amount of sightseeing and shenanigans into the adventure. I had intended to chronicle said adventure through the blog while I was there, but something kept interfering with my short-term memory and it just didn't happen. You are thus spared the extended travelogue and can instead chew on these scattered morsels of observation.

Things you see in Amsterdam:

- Some of the oldest buildings in Europe (Amsterdam has been remarkably unaffected by the various wars that have bombed out classic architecture in cities such as London. To walk in Amsterdam is to walk among rows of five-story structures that have stood since the 17th century. The buildings lean slightly into the street, a design that allowed for residents of the upper floors to lower baskets down to street level, to be filled with goods from the markets).

- Canals. They loop around the city in concentric circles, passing under small bridges. Looking down-canal from one of the bridges provides, to my mind, the iconic view of the city - the canal and two or three bridges in the distance until the waterway veers off on its circular path, taking the old, beautiful buildings with it.

- Museums. The Van Gogh. The Rijksmuseum (with lots of Rembrandt and a great visual tour through the history of the Dutch and their colonies). Do not go to Amsterdam without going to these places.

- Coffeeshops. Everyone knows you can do soft drugs legally in Amsterdam, although it's considered bad form to do them anywhere other than the designated "coffeeshops." Actually, I think the Dutch consider it pretty bad form to be a pothead in general. The quasi-legal status of drugs in the Netherlands is an object lesson in sensible legislation...people in the country don't grow up thinking of weed as a mysterious, forbidden fruit, so they're not as eager to taste it (especially when the legions of zombified tourists make it look so lame). Still, it's a fun and unique experience to buy drugs off a menu.

- Prostitutes in windows. Again, everyone knows this. But I was somewhat surprised to find, on this visit, that they're in the windows as early as 10 in the morning. Not surprised, however, to learn that the 10AM window shift is (even) more depressing than the 10PM.

Things you do not see in Holland:

- Obesity. Everyone is on their bikes or on their feet at all times, which must be the reason that, despite the presence of super-rich pastries on every street corner, the total fat of the Amsterdam population seems to be less than that of one Big Mac. If you see a fat person, they're a foreigner.

- Short people. How the Dutch are not a basketball power is beyond me. Even the women all seem to be over six feet. If you see a short person (under six feet), they're either under the age of 12 or a foreigner.

Okay, so that ended up being an extended travelogue after all. And it probably contained zero news value for anyone who's been there or even read about the city in any detail. But I had to record something for the record about Amsterdam.

And really, it's MY blog, isn't it?

U.S. policy, 2009 model

President-elect Obama met with President Bush at the White House today for the traditional post-election photo-op and tour. I bet if Dubya had the option, he'd hand over the keys this minute - it has to be awkward playing housesitter for a guy that so many people are so eager to see take charge. Doubly awkward considering Bush himself was arguably the main reason that Republicans were so thoroughly trounced.

There was also some news today about how the first few weeks of Obama's presidency might go, beginning with a plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention centre. Also reported in the Toronto Star: Obama's apparently working out a list of policies he can and will immediately reverse upon taking office, which includes lifting a ban on stem cell research.

While the biggest problems - the economic crisis, the wars - will take much more time and effort to resolve, there's reason to believe Obama's America will differ from Bush's in some meaningful ways quite soon after the transition. A relief for liberals, yes, but also a testament to American democracy, as none other than Desmond Tutu notes in the Washington Post.

As Tutu reminds us, it's worth appreciating any country that allows its citizens to change course every few years when bad leadership leads them astray.

Barack to the Future

Thanks to an ill-timed work conference, it's taken me two days to comment on the end result of what had been a personal obsession for a year and a half. But while history waits for no man, it was kind enough to hold off until I got home on Tuesday night, and can surely forgive my delayed written reaction.

Barack Obama is the president-elect of the United States. And it wasn't even close. The Democratic ticket won a landslide in the Electoral College and drew 52% of the popular vote, which sounds tight until you consider that it's the largest popular vote percentage earned by any candidate in 20 years.

Obama won't have much time to ruminate about the history he's made as the first president not of purely Caucasian descent. The economy's in the toilet, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are ongoing and it's difficult to think of a president in recent memory who took office at a more challenging time. The honeymoon will be short, and it won't be long before Obama starts to disappoint those who projected certain qualities and ideologies onto him that aren't necessarily there. Case in point: his proposed plan to withdraw troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office. I've never taken this claim at face value. Once he's in the White House, I believe Obama is going to fully appreciate the complexity of the situation and realize that a more cautious withdrawal plan is necessary. He'll still do what he can to bring troops home - it's just that his ardent anti-war supporters will not be satisfied with the pace.

But for now, rather than focus on how President Obama may or may not live up to his campaign pledges, there is reason to celebrate - in a truly bi-partisan fashion - the fact that he has earned the chance to try. Not because he is necessarily the best candidate (although it says here he was) or has the best plan (although it says here he does) or ran the best campaign (he did) or because the U.S. and the world desperately need "change" (they do). Rather, this election was most notable in what it reflected about Americans.

Residents of more liberal Western countries such as Canada often like to claim a moral and intellectual superiority over "stupid Americans," a stance that, while colossally arrogant and stupid in itself, has been all too easy to justify for the past eight years. And throughout Obama's run for president, even as it became clear in recent weeks that his victory was all but assured, many people still couldn't quite believe that the U.S. would actually elect a biracial leader to its highest office. Too many racists would come out of the closet and into the voting booths, many predicted. Too many white voters would, at the last minute, balk at the notion of a president with dark skin and a last name separated by only one letter from the first name of the world's most-wanted terrorist.

Well, I guess Americans aren't so stupid. And I guess that closet full of racists isn't so full anymore, after all. What's astonishing isn't just that Obama won - it's that he won by carrying states like Florida, with its high proportion of aging, conservative voters,Virginia, the home territory of the Confederacy, blue-collar bellwethers Ohio and Florida and traditional Republican strongholds such as Iowa and New Mexico. He won a 14-point majority of female votes and pulled in a surprising number of votes from the white lunchpail crowd that was always his toughest audience.

In other words, he didn't just win by turning out the vote among white progressives, minorities and young people - although he did do all that. He won by collecting a substantial number of votes from the very people that us morally and intellectually superior foreigners (and many blue-state Americans) thought would automatically reject him. Because of this, he can lay legitimate claim to being a truly national president after years of rigid division between liberals and conservatives. Although he still has to prove his bona fides as a uniter in government, his campaign has already succeeded in making his country more united.

So credit Obama with proving to doubters, through sheer force of intellect, personality and grace, that race is not an obstacle to the presidency. But more so than that, credit the American voters, who may very well have - despite the assumptions of anti-American detractors - already come to that conclusion before he even announced his candidacy.

When I was in Mississippi this past summer, one of my hosts, a Republican who was disillusioned with the Bush Administration, said that regardless of the failures of the past eight years, John McCain would win because America simply wasn't ready to elect a black president. I wonder how he felt on Tuesday night - pleased? disappointed? - to discover that he was wrong.