KEY POINTS:
Forty years ago in Grant Park, Chicago, the scene of Barack Obama's victory rally, the last wave of youthful idealism and hope created by John F. Kennedy's election was sandbagged by riot police who waded into anti-war protesters as if they were the enemy within.
After the Battle
of Chicago, Kennedy's call to public service - "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" - and example of generational change seemed like wistful echoes of a bygone era.
Non-violent protest against the Vietnam War had been met with police brutality; old white men were still in charge; the US was still America Inc.
In the spirit of Won't Get Fooled Again, The Who's howl of militant disillusionment, the 60s generation withdrew from mainstream politics.
Many became single-issue activists for causes like feminism, racial equality and environmentalism while others threw their energy into the counter-culture. Some went from idealism to cynicism in a single bound and set out to get rich, figuring that living well was the best revenge.
A handful turned to terrorism, retaliating - as they saw it - against a system that had declared war on them.
One such was William Ayers, the terrorist with whom Obama supposedly "palled around" - by that stage he was respectable enough to be named Chicago's citizen of the year - and who floated invisibly through the campaign like Banquo's ghost.
Obama has reignited that youthful idealism and encouraged many Americans - and non-Americans - to dare to hope.
In the Christian Science Monitor, a 55-year-old white banker and independent voter described the epiphany he experienced when his wife press-ganged him into canvassing for the President-elect: "I've learned that this election is not about what we think of as the 'big things'. [It's] about the heart of America. It's about the young people who are losing hope and the old people who have been forgotten. It's about those who have worked all their lives and never fully realised the hope of America, but see that promise for their grandchildren in Barack Obama."
On election night, conservative pundit Bill Bennett wondered if the generation inspired by Obama would achieve more than their 60s predecessors who, he jibed, promised much but delivered little.
You'd hardly expect Bennett to praise the generation which conservatives blame for everything that's wrong with the world today, but it does make you wonder how many conservative intellectuals it takes to join the dots: if the 60s generation hadn't fought the cultural battles that transformed Western society, Obama wouldn't be where he is today.
John McCain's "brand" was an intriguing blend of war hero and maverick with little interest in the Republican base's core cause: rolling back the left's victories in the culture war.
His choice of Sarah Palin as running mate and the mean-spiritedness of his campaign made him appear a Faustian figure prepared to betray his principles to win power.
He often seemed in conflict with himself, aware that he was tarnishing his reputation as a man of substance and independence, yet unable to resist the siren song of populism, that strange brew of guns, God and greed served up by George W. Bush.
This led him, in the face of what he labelled the greatest financial crisis of our time, to effectively contract out his economic policy to that self-confessed ignoramus, Joe the Plumber.
How soul-destroying must it have been for this deeply patriotic and serious man to offer a lesser version of himself to the American people as part of a package along with a political bimbo and a very average Joe?
As Harvard professor of psychology Steven Pinker wrote, the overall theme of the McCain-Palin campaign was that "expertise is overrated, home-spun sincerity is better than sophistication, conviction is more important that analysis".
McCain desperately wanted to puncture what he saw as the bubble of hype surrounding his inexperienced and exotic opponent, yet feared the dark forces that an unrestrained assault might unleash.
To his credit, he stuck to his pledge to ignore Obama's former pastor, the provocative Rev Jeremiah Wright, even when his backers and Palin pressured him to play that card.
After his admirable concession speech, McCain brushed cheeks with Palin and shook her husband's hand with the indecent haste of someone farewelling ghastly distant relatives who'd turned up out of the blue and had to be crowbarred out of the spare bedroom. Alone at last!
And so we are left with Obama, upon whose slim shoulders a world of expectations now teeters.
He was an extraordinary candidate, but extraordinary Presidents are a rarer breed.
