On-camera histrionics over the Obama victory are being duly noted, but it is  CNN's Christianne Amanpour's little memoir of Election Day morning in NYC that takes the cake (A) because it is written, and, therefore, required at least some reflection; and (B) because it implies a breathtaking tendency to see the US--as led by non-black, non-Democratic presidents, that is--with hopeless dictatorships whose people presumably yearn for democracy (sometimes supplied, quite quixotically, by the US....). She writes:

Finding myself in New York City this U.S. election Day, I saw scenes that reminded me of the first democratic elections I covered in Afghanistan in 2004, or Iraq in 2005.

Scenes that reminded me of the historic election in South Africa in 1994 when a black man, Nelson Mandela, was elected president thus ending generations of white minority rule known as apartheid.

Or 1998 in Iran when women and young people turned out en masse to elect the first ever reform president, the moderate cleric Mohammad Khatami.

The enduring motif from those elections were the massively long lines at the polling centers. Men and women standing patiently, sometimes for hours, to cast their first ever vote for a hopeful secure future....