A tiny touch of Latvia in Barack Obama historic win

The history was made yesterday in the United States of America. There are millions of news outlets repeating today about the significance of the Barack Obama truly historic win. This morning here in Europe was warm, because good news were coming from the CNN newsroom - Barack Obama is going to be the 44th president of the USA. Stayed up late last night for seeing history being made, and also had a glimpse on the technology marvel - the hologram beaming Jessica Yellin in from Chicago into the CNN bureau, uhh, it was spectacular:)

As I heard from Piret Kriivan in Tallinn Estonian media was thus up-beat about the US elections, that it felt as if Estonians were following elections of their own. Neighboring Latvia started focusing on the US elections about a week before elections. Newspapers started publishing articles about the front runners of Donkey & Elephant parties, and both commercial and public TV stations sent their correspondents to the US. Ms Stikāne from TV3 was simply disastrous (no interviews just plain talk on Time Square in Big Apple and Republican thrown parties on Wednesday news for example), while Dīvs Reiznieks from the Latvian TV did a real quality reporting.

He went also to Chicago and interviewed Michael Strautmanis, who is Barack Obama's chief counsel. Juris Strautmanis family arrived to Illinois in the 1950's as Latvian emigrees. In the 1970's Juris married with Sandra who had her son Michael from her first marriage. Even though Juris later divorced from Michael' s mother and later retired to sunny Puerto Rico, Michael Strautmanis took his stepfather's Juris last name. It was about a year ago when Latvian journalists interviewed Michael Strautmanis for the first time. Interview then was very amicable and clearly showed that it is possible to strive for highest achievements with a hard labour in America.

Michael Strautmanis hard work has paid off, and it is rather probable that Michael Strautmanis would become a part of the new White House staff. Probably there will be some boasting "nationalists" saying that Latvian culture or Latvia was also playing a part in the truly historic election victory. Actually, we can see something similar happening in Kenya already, although Kenyans at least can boast about the ancestral land of Barack Obama's father. In reality, however, the Latvian culture had just as tiny touch to this historic event as the cheering of Obama citizens, that is actually a town in Japan.

Anyway, the historic win of Barack Obama is past already and now the transitional period between presidencies will last until the early January. The new president faces enormous tasks in order to bring the CHANGE into the traditional politics of Washington D.C. I can only wish that Michael Strautmanis would serve his country well, and thus help the United States to reacquire its lost soft power status among other democracies around the world. While I have little doubts about devotion of Barack Obama and his newly formed staff to transform America, I am doubtful about the devotion of Latvian political elite in its efforts to manage country sinking deeper in crisis and that is plagued by several vices. Why is it so is another story, and thus next blog entries would follow.