Barack Obama, in his highly praised speech about Race in America quoted William Faulkner "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." The implication being that there is a need to confront our history.

Faulkner in his own life, and in the lives of most of his major characters, does just that. But he, and they, also struggle to transcend the past though it forms an in-eradicable and essential part of them.

Obama too, is being presented to America, and not incidentally to the world, as a transcendent, post partisan figure who will rise to the challenges of this young yet turbulent century, without the political divisions stemming, among other things, from the rebellious 1960's.

It has been pointed out by many, including some less partisan independents, that his personal and legislative experiential history indicate that, on the contrary, his life history belies his soaring rhetoric. He has shown himself to be liberal, to the left even of Hillary Clinton.

What is the likelihood, that Barack could achieve in the Presidency what Faulkner, in his life, and his characters in his novels achieved.

Faulkner provides us with a template suggesting how someone can surpass the limitations imposed by the past. Born into an era and a culture of heroic Victorian Aristocracy he struggled most of his life to adapt to the forces of Modernism.

He succeeded and who is to say that this desperately yearning nation of ours does not deserve the opportunity of having this promising and inspiring young man live out his and our destiny? Many before him have risen to challenges and grown beyond their past achievements. Isn't that what America is all about?