Obama, Winfrey hear cheers that symbolize a magnificent change

DES MOINES, Iowa -- It is 1,134 miles and 53 years since Jerome Schlicter, a teacher, walked into my eighth-grade classroom and held up The New York Times. The headline read, "High Court Bans School Segregation," and it ran clear across the top of the page. It was very rare to see such a headline, Schlicter told us, and we sat, the boys with ties, the girls with dresses, feeling somehow a part of history ourselves. I had that same feeling here the other day.

The event was the joint appearance of Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama at the Hy-Vee Hall here before an estimated 18,500 people, the vast majority of them -- the very vast majority of them -- white. They screamed first for Michelle Obama, incredibly slim and very stylish, and then -- louder, much louder -- for Oprah and then, as if it were not possible, in equal decibels for Obama, youthful, trim, sleek, a Mercury carrying an important message: himself.

You could look up at the stage, at the immense crowd, and marvel at it all. Here in the heartland of a nation founded on the twin principles of freedom and slavery, here in the middle of an America once so racist that blacks in the South could not even try on shoes before buying them, was the most powerful media personality of our times, a black woman. Next to her stood the possible Democratic presidential nominee, a black man. And to the audience none of that mattered. Or so it seemed.

History, like light itself, is unfelt. The wonder of Oprah -- two African-Americans who have managed to uncouple "African" from "American" -- is hardly noticed. Jerry Schlicter would not have believed it.

At the moment, the prudent would call the Iowa race a dead heat -- Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards all plus-or-minus within the statistical margin of error. But that is not quite the case. It is Obama who is gaining in the latest polls, Clinton is slipping, and Edwards is treading water. Somewhat the same process is under way in New Hampshire, where again Obama is coming on strong.

I think of Mikhail Gorbachev, a truly historic figure reduced to endorsing Louis Vuitton leather products in a now-famous print ad. I superimpose Hillary's face on Gorby's body. Here is another historic figure -- former first lady, U.S. senator, and the first really serious female presidential candidate. Yet somehow, she has become the personification of the status quo, a stale establishment figure.

The Democratic debate in Philadelphia two months ago might have produced a lethal sound bite: Hillary waffling on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. Edwards pounced. There, the real Hillary -- not real at all. Then husband Bill had to say he was always against the Iraq War and it all came back in a rush -- the caricature of Clinton as a fairground slickster, hiding the truth under swiftly moving shells, and of Hillary the unknowable, calculating and cold. The consequences were almost immediate: She dipped. Obama rose.

Is it over? The formulaic phrase is that anything can happen. Still early yet. But it's not. The Iowa caucuses are Jan. 3, soon. And sooner still comes the Christmas hiatus, with the good chance that everything will be placed on hold. So the polling numbers a week from now will be the polling numbers around New Year's Day.

There is no doubt that the zeitgeist whispers the name Obama, that he electrified the crowd here with a passionate speech and that it was impossible, if not historically irresponsible to look at that platform -- three African-Americans -- and at the immense and mostly white crowd and not feel that something big was happening. Obama's banner captured that: "Change we can believe in."

It has taken 1,134 miles and 53 years, but just as it was with the newspaper that Jerry Schlicter held up, this was a change that did not require belief. You could see it.

© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group