This one is different...

There was the same sweet gray-haired lady who needed three shouts in her good ear before she could decipher my full name for polling place verification. There were the same deeply investigative news stories claiming voters were frustrated with long lines. And there were the same “I Voted” stickers that kindle civic shivers of pride within you every time you look down at your shirt post-vote.

But this Nov. 4 was different.

It was different not because the head of state switched political party affiliations or even because the first African-American was voted into office.

It was different because about 130 million of us cast a ballot, the highest voter turnout since 1968. It was different because “apathetic, self-infatuated” 18- to 29-year-olds made up 18% of the electorate, while voters age 65 and older represented only 16%. It was different because older black women at Grant Park in Chicago and twentysomething white men at Times Square in New York wept as they watched the president-elect speak.

Something different was going through our minds this time around. As Buffalo Springfield crooned, “there’s something happenin’ here.”

Out of all the rhetorical flourishes that were cascading out of commentators’ mouths after Obama reached 270 electoral votes, NBC newsman Tom Brokaw struck a chord that I think adds an apt caption to the polling numbers and tears of joy.

“When this family takes up residence in the White House and he puts his hand on the Bible and becomes President of the United States,” Brokaw said, “there’s going to be a cultural and political change in America, and I’m not sure that we fully understand how sweeping it is going to be. People are going to want to go to Washington and work for the government in a way they haven’t in the past 20 years…And that’s what this country needs. It really does need a re-enlistment of citizenship, people raising their hands saying, ‘Count on me. I’m willing to come to Washington.’”

My grade school Social Studies textbooks would gush about the U.S. as the land of opportunity, a melting pot of pluralistic virtue, using language that roused the warm-and-fuzzies in idealistic schoolchildren.

But textbook ideals most often do not carry over into real life.

Whether you love him or hate him, Obama, however, does connect these ideals with reality. He is now larger than life, a breaking point on the timeline of history, a walking demonstration of progress who breathes new life into our country’s unique ideals.

Will that repair the financial crisis? Absolutely not. Will that end global warming? Nope. Will Russia and North Korea all of a sudden sing kumbaya with us? No sir.

But the spirit he stirs is not just hot air. It’s powerful. It makes politics seem more relevant and accessible. By electing a black man president 43 years after giving blacks the unqualified right to vote, we’ve shown the world that we actually strive to apply our ideals.

With all that said, it’s easy to romanticize this story. The truth is that Obama has set some sky-scraper-high expectations for himself, and he inevitably will let down those who think he can do no wrong.

But the impromptu celebrations seen in the streets of this country and around the world crystallized for us that this Nov. 4 was unlike all the rest.

Here’s to hoping it inspires another generation whose civic satisfaction is not limited to the stickers handed out every Election Day.