THREE CHEERS...

... for Barack Obama who has shown that there are more important things in life even than the leadership of the world's most influential nation. His decision to break off from his presidential campaign for two days to visit his gravely ill grandmother in Honolulu showed that his essential values are intact despite the pressures of political life at the top. It might be said that his lead over John McCain is large enough to have enabled him to take this risk so close to polling day but most people will have concluded that he would have done the same thing even if the contest was neck-and-neck. Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, 86 today, still lives in the same 10th floor apartment where he grew up with her between the formative ages of 10 and 18. “She poured everything she had into me,“ he has said, “and helped make me the man I am today.” Whatever the result of the election, it has introduced the world to a remarkable American.