Obama's election means to me: that at last we have a president who speaks and acts as though he knows the importance of the concept of our "common good."  Common means addressing the specific interests of the public in relation each to the other, e.g. his speech of March 18, 2008 in which he defended the truth of African American suffering of injustice in our history but also the unjust suffering of white working-class Americans. Long ago, the social psychologist G.H. Mead said: "Democracy depends upon the ability of the voter, once inside the voting booth, to vote for someone else's interests in addition to their own." Also, my hope it that in Obama we will get loose from the superficial uses of the words "left" and "right" in describing policy alternatives, as well as "liberal" and "conservative."  We must get away from using all four of these words as abstractions which conceal human realities of  need and responsibility.  Common good also means the human common good worldwide. The new global world will not permit us to indulge in a facile politics which tosses off  "America first" as either a realistic or a moral stance towards our world neighbors.

Donald W. Shriver, Jr. is president emeritus of the Union Theological Seminary in New York