God Bless America!

As a medical student in Chicago in 1968, I spent a long week ministering to the masses of demonstrators who were in the streets at the Democratic Convention. The country was exhausted by all that had already happened that year: assassinations, war, a country circling in despair and anguish. Late in the final evening of the convention, I was standing with thousands of others in Grant Park. The night had been filled with police riots and the surging crowds and the Illinois National Guard marching in to station themselves in front us with fixed bayonets and fierce expressions. At the top of our lungs, we chanted ‘The whole world is watching.’

Forty years later, the same park in Chicago held 100 000 people waiting to hear Barack Obama give his acceptance speech as President of the United States. Again, Chicago was the centre of the country, not geographically, of course, but the centre of all the expectations for what was going to happen next. My generation had tried. But, as Barack said repeatedly, ‘this is our time.’ And this time, the whole world really was watching — and dancing, and weeping with joy. The one campaign poster we are definitely keeping for history is the one that simply says, ‘OBAMANOS!!’

• © British Journal of General Practice, 2008.