Among the many historic things from Tuesday, like me making it to 37, is this: for the first (and possibly, it wouldn’t surprise me, the last) time, I voted for someone rather than against a person or ideal.  For all of Palin’s rhetoric about being an outsider, she’s as much if not more politician than anyone else; I genuinely don’t get that feeling about Obama.  Yeah, I’m possibly wrong, and you can do your irritating little happy dance in two years when he reveals his great campaigning lies, but until then, I feel like we’ve put a normal guy in to the highest office of the US.

This is one of those things that everyone has to decide for themselves, sure, but every politician on the national level has struck me as untouchable, like a celebrity.  Go back, though, and watch Obama’s last appearance on The Daily Show, and tell me he doesn’t have some sort of je ne c’est quoi that separates him from the rest.  Or how about this little bit from the latest Newsweek:

The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, “I don’t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that’s green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”

I can’t imagine having a few shots with Clinton or Palin or Kennedy.  It’s partly the politician and, I’m sure, partly the fact that I’m not an Ivy League graduate from money with blind ambitions of power and control. And while I’m sure that Barack Obama wouldn’t fit in too happily at Bailey’s, at least I can imagine it happening in a somewhat real-world way.  It’s that real-world quality that puts him in a league of (as of now and the foreseeable future) one.