Baratunde Thurston: Obama has united a divided country

This is an era of new politics. This is a time of uninhibited joy. America is back in business and that business will be conducted in a fair, honourable, and just way.

I listened to the President of the United States talk to his country and his country was listening. And what he said really was new, it was unifying, it was about rejecting false choices of old politics: the false choice about the economy that says that for us to succeed others must become wealthier than ever before. Obama's position was clear, "A nation cannot prosper long when it favours only the prosperous."

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This was a call to arms, asking us to measure our society by the least among us and not those with the most.

And this is a President who doesn't see political advantage in the dividing of that society - that's significant in a country that has been repeatedly asked to choose between God and science. Obama spoke about the restoration of science, and the restoration of the value of science in our economy. "We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories", he said, extraordinarily acknowledging the "non-believers".

At the same time he invited the Rev Rick Warren, an evangelical pastor who has been outspoken about the role of women and on gay marriage issues to perform the invocation. Even his prayer was a respectful overture towards the rebalancing of the nation. This is new politics.

He also rejected the false choice laid down in the Bush era which said that in order to have safety we must compromise our freedom. We do not have to make that choice, we never did, and this was not said by a think tank, by a person on the street, by some group lobbying Washington but by the top official in our country. It's so heartening to hear - undermining that legacy of Abu Ghraib, of Guantanamo, the torture for which my nation has become justifiably famous.

Barack Obama's speech was a clear rebuke of those policies pursued by George W Bush and half the energy I put into partying last night came from watching the former President walk onto that Helicopter and fly away, far away, from American politics. That legacy has been closed down.

If America has been divided, by the economy, by religion, and by security, it has been even more profoundly estranged by race. And Obama deals with race in just the same way as it exists here - it may rarely be front and centre but it is always there. It is underlying essence of wealth disparities, of community relations, and now our President. The visual, on the steps of the Capitol built by slave labour, was obvious and he recognised his background in a very personal way. But what is different now is that those issues that once divided us are no longer on the outside, their advocates no-longer peering through the windows of those buildings of power. Obama is not agitating the White House, he is the White House. And everything he does will reflect on the black population outside. In many ways, although unifying, this further complicates America's uneasy racial history. How he reacts when injustice strikes, in the form of police brutality, or through discrimination will be intriguing to watch. It will be no small test of President Obama and this welcome new politics.

Baratunde Thurston is a New York-based editor at 'The Onion' and co-founder of the black political blog Jack and Jill Politics