This is perhaps the first election post mortem where I do not have to eat crow.

The only thing I predicted was that if the economy was in the tank, Barack Obama might win, but if security was our top issue, John McCain had a leg up.

The activity and fear surrounding the economy over the past several weeks titled the scale, and voters responded.

What might be interesting to see now, with an Obama victory, is whether minority hiring quotas will still be the rule. Or, with proof now that the highest position in the land can be secured based on merit and not race, why should there be required quotas anymore?

My own son is not a Maryland State trooper today because, when he applied, he was not admitted (in spite of an excellent recommendation) because of a hiring program that required minority consideration.

Thereby hangs a tale of how life's bumps may turn out to be a boost. My son applied to another agency for training. As a lowly starter he took any spare time to obtain helicopter ratings until he was able to teach. With those ratings he got hours and hours of experience, not only in flight but with the helicopter maintenance of his own teaching helicopter.

Small world -- he now has exactly the skills the state police are lacking in their own helicopter program.

He's not there -- with his factory maintenance and training certifications -- because he was a majority and not a minority.

So my wish and hope is that now, we can forget all about racial quotas and go back to allowing the most qualified person to be given positions regardless of race, color or creed.

To this writer, that's my America. The election of Obama as President of the United States proves there are no more racial barriers.

Any time there is an election and your pick doesn't win you look to find a scapegoat to blame.

Mine is President George W. Bush. After the stock market tanked he went on television, but why didn't he more fully explain why the problem took place and who was a directly to blame?

I would like to have his talk include pictures of banks -- such as Wells Fargo being picketed for not giving loans to the minorities that had poor or non-existent credit scores. I would like to have seen charts where both government-sponsored mortgage agencies were pressured by legislators to give loans to people that didn't meet those minimum requirements.

Bush could have shown evidence showing the amounts of funds from these agencies to legislators in Washington. Bush could have, and should have, included names of those who got the money, the amounts and the exact wording of directives to make unsound loans.

The bundling of good and bad loans was tantamount to the vegetable merchant placing good berries on a box of rotten ones, hoping no one would dig deep. The man who could have best explained this to the public would have been President Bush.

Without that full disclosure from the president, the public was afforded views only from communicators in the media -- with their own political bias.

The only thing I seem to have right in this election was that up to and including election day I saw no Obama signs on known strong democratic lawns. Prior to this writing, I took down my McCain sign with held-back tears.

Bias can get to you. As my wife Pat and I were going across the back roads of Upperco, we saw a bunch of what I thought were Obama signs. I remarked that perhaps I was wrong in guessing my country people were not going for Obama.

"As usual, your eyes are getting as bad as your hearing," she replied, "If you look carefully, that sign reads, 'NO-bama.' not 'Obama."

In retrospect, they were the most clever signs I saw in the campaign.

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